


hold it high

by Ealasaid, Pavuvu



Series: between the crosses [2]
Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gen, Ghosts, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Supernatural Elements, ghost!Blake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22855570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ealasaid/pseuds/Ealasaid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pavuvu/pseuds/Pavuvu
Summary: William Schofield collects ghosts, but that doesn't mean he's used to them sticking around.  Tom Blake proves, as always, the exception.[a continuation ofResonanceand a novelization of the latter half of the movie, picking up just after Blake's death.  Chapter 5 is post-canon.]
Relationships: Tom Blake & William Schofield
Series: between the crosses [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656289
Comments: 76
Kudos: 124





	1. Schofield

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pavuvu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pavuvu/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Resonance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22472440) by [Pavuvu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pavuvu/pseuds/Pavuvu). 



> Inspired by Pavuvu's "Resonance." If you haven't read it, I highly recommend you do so first -- some elements of this story may not make sense without it, and this story picks up immediately where that one leaves off.
> 
> Title taken from the famous WWI poem "In Flanders Fields," by John McCrae.

In Will’s experience, ghosts take time to . . . gain coherence. Coherent cognisance, a coherent form, a coherent expectation and self-identity of being dead. Will has been around the dead and dying for so long, now, that he can almost claim to be an expert in the subject, if he had ever found an appropriate academic institution that would recognise it.

In a stark contrast of Will’s experiences -- and true to form -- Lance Corporal Blake is effing chatty within ten effing minutes. Will would be pissed with relief if he weren’t mourning the dead bastard in the middle of a troop convoy puttering down the road.

“That’s a good one, that is,” Blake says loudly after the bucktoothed, lisping private next to Schofield gives his impression of some arsehole officer. “That reminds me of --”

“No no, you’ve _both_ got him wrong,” says the turbaned Indian over Blake, his heavy accent both more and less foreign than half of the other soldiers’ in the lorry. Will is the only one who hears Blake stutter into silence. After a moment, he catches sight of him, too: a bizarre superimposed outline atop the Scot sitting next to Will, leaning back against the running board in direct contrast to the Scot’s slouch-forward of interest.

The Indian launches into his impression of the offending officer, and Will almost wishes he had the privacy to mutter something to Blake, who is now looking around the vehicle in confusion. Blake always has -- had -- _fuck_ \-- endless stories, and never bothered to give thought about whether his audience wished to hear them. It usually left the younger Lance Corporal both in the good favor and the collective high spirits of whomever he had entertained. 

But now Blake is dead. No one can hear his stories, besides Will. (And, Will reminds himself, he cannot keep Blake like the invisible friend everyone has before they become five years old. Will may be carrying Blake’s ghost, but Blake is no longer alive, and the sooner Will batters that into his brain, the better.)

(It hurts. Fuck, but it hurts.) 

Will could pretend to pray; people are always clasping hands and muttering to themselves in church, or the trenches, or with their guts spilling out in the mud. At the moment, though, he is in none of those situations and is very aware of the well-advertised lack of notice fixed on his strangeness by everyone else in the lorry, a lone soldier in a well-established unit. They are all politely pretending to ignore his reddened eyes and arrhythmic breathing as his body and mind try to process the loss of the person who had been his best friend since the year began, even though they are all raveningly curious as to what circumstances would lead to him being alone in a farmyard far past No Man’s Land with the corpse of his friend. They are being considerate. 

He startles out of his reverie when the soldier across from Lisper shoves at him. Will flinches at the sudden movement as Lisper jerks back. “Oi! Could’ve taken my teeth out with that!”

“You could use a new set,” someone remarks. Will checks his watch.

“You got somewhere to be, mate?”

Which is when the whole lorry yawns to the side, wallowing in mud. Will is the first one up, getting out, and hoping that it is an easy fix. “Everyone out,” he orders, seeing the extent of the problem. “Out!”

The others grumble and clamber out, Lisper stuffing crumbly bread into his bucktoothed mouth as he goes. “All right, all right,” says their Lance Corporal, a bloke with reddish brown hair. His tone warns that Schofield is pushing it. “Keep your hair on, mate.” Will supposes he should be grateful by even the lackluster response; he might have the rank to give the order to fellow enlisted and expect it followed, but he is not their direct officer, and does not command the same respect.

“Try it in reverse,” he calls to the driver as Blake drifts after them, looking queasily at his feet that are not quite touching the ground.

“We should get wood planks and put it under the wheels,” Lisper offers. The other soldiers meander with the winds, clearly taking advantage of the forced halt to stop and smell the roses.

“There’s no time for that,” Will rejoins tersely. “We’ll have to push.”

“Scho,” Blake says, appearing suddenly in view. The ghost is standing right in front of Will as he and five of the men try pushing in time while the driver accelerates the engine. “Scho, can you see me?”

  
_art courtesy of the fabulous @[schratfield!](https://schratfield.tumblr.com/) aaaaa!_

Will has been steeling himself ever since he caught sight of Blake in the lorry. There is only one person here who would call him that, and Will resolutely does not look up when he hears it. He does his best to pretend he hasn’t heard it at all: he cannot look at Blake right now. If Will did, he would crack all to pieces trying to comfort his friend. Will has a mission to complete, and at this very moment, he needs to not appear absolutely mad in front of the other soldiers. 

“Again,” Will says to the living.

“Scho, please!” Blake cries as they try again, and he sounds like he did when he was bleeding out in Will’s arms, panicky and high. “I don’t understand!” 

Will’s eyes sting and he cannot quite strangle the noise that crawls out his throat. He lets it out and shouts in frustration as he feels the vehicle fail to pull out of the mud. 

“Please,” Will says to the men (some of whom, he notes, eye him with concern. Right, he is not keeping it together well). His voice cracks halfway through. “I need to get somewhere.”

The others look at their Lance Corporal. He gives this a moment of consideration. Then, he flicks his freshly-lit fag into the mud. “All right, lads, let’s get to it,” he says, and now the entire unit pitches in.

The third attempt fares better, but they are still going nowhere. Will yells again as he pushes with everything he has got, but it isn’t enough. “Come on boys, one last push, yeah?” the Lance Corporal shouts, seeming to take personal offense to this. Will switches his grip, desperation lending him strength. 

With a lurch, the vehicle slithers free at last, and so does Will, who finds himself up to his elbows in mud when the lorry outpaces him. 

“Scho, look at me,” Blake pleads in his ear. Will stares at ghostly knees remaining unstained by the mud they are kneeling in as Blake crouches next to him and _begs._ “Look at me! Can’t you hear me? I’m right here!”

“Are you all right?” the Indian asks him quietly in the other one as he helps pull Will back onto his feet.

“Yes,” Will says, bouncing a little to redistribute the weight of his kit. He is proud; he manages to keep his voice steady. He takes a deep, measured breath, timing it to his stride as he passes Blake. He takes another. He is helped up into the lorry, where he sees that the grace period is up: they have left him a space in the centre. He sits and takes his rifle from Lisper. 

Blake appears in the aisle as the vehicle starts moving again, outline flickering. He grabs at the straps of Will’s webbing and shakes him, hard -- and screams as his hands go right through Will’s chest instead. He keeps it up, trying so hard to reach out to Will, and by god it takes every single ounce of control Will has _not to react._

Will closes his eyes and breathes and counts each one. He feels like he’s fraying cloth, threads loosened and unraveling faster than he can tuck them back together -- but he has to keep going. One breath after another, after another, after another, all while Blake eventually stops trying to occupy the same space as Will and sinks to the floor of the lorry, weeping and half-hidden in a forest of soldiers’ knees and rifles. 

Will honestly cannot estimate how much time this takes. It feels like entire lifetimes go by, but -- 

“So where are you going?” the Indian asks. 

\-- probably only a few minutes, actually, if soldiers’ curiosity were any measure. Wearily, he prods his mind into interacting with the living world around him again. He had made a right spectacle of himself in getting the lorry out. “2nd Devons, outside of Écoust. I need to give them a message.”

“Why?” 

“They’re attacking tomorrow at dawn,” Will answers evenly. He is taking care to not focus his gaze on anything in particular, but he does notice as Blake’s shoulders start to slow between ghostly heaves. “I have orders to stop the attack.”

“What for?” someone else asks.

“It’s a trap.” Blake stiffens where he is sitting. The reminder is grim. But he is settling, as well -- or at least, not shaking so hard as a moment ago.

“How many?” asks someone behind him.

“Sixteen hundred.”

Someone whistles disconcertingly in the silence. Then:

“And they sent you alone?!” 

Will hesitates. There are many things that could be said here. But he does not owe them any real explanations, and two of the men in the convoy helped him carry Blake from the dirty farmyard to the clean grass that bordered it. He figures these ones will sort out the sordid details for themselves soon enough. “There were two of us,” he says, simply. 

There is a fateful silence. Even the company useless are well aware what the omission means. Will is equally well aware that every single man listening has one thought in their head: _there but for the grace of God, go I._ . . If he could afford to be selfish enough to dwell on what brought him to his present circumstances, Will would choke on the bitterness. 

The Scot, the one who was sitting beside him earlier and who is now sitting across from him, grunts as the moment passes. “So it’s down to you.” 

Will can always recognize another veteran; they disregard the whys and why nots in the face of implacable truth: it must happen, or you will die. He can take reassurance from this one’s pragmatic statement -- and also from the small glass flask the Scot offers him. “Thank you,” Will tells him.

But as Will takes the flask, the ghost of his friend shudders horribly, form losing distinction and growing fainter. “Oh, Scho,” Tom whispers, all choked, childlike misery as Will takes a swig. “Scho, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to go alone.” 

And that is it: Will cannot stand anything more. Thank goodness for whiskey -- his flinch can be excused by that. He clears his throat and passes back the flask, using the movement to mask how he reaches out with his other hand and carefully twiddles Tom’s ghost towards him. Will uses the burn of the liquor in his throat as a focus and reels the ghost into his breast-pocket water-proof tin of photographs, like a trout tickled in the Thames. It isn’t something he’s practiced at and honestly he’s never really tried this consciously but -- he can’t bear to leave Blake out in the cold any more. Even if Blake can’t actually feel the cold.

Blake dematerializes, wisping into a small stream that slips between Will’s jacket lapels and out of sight. Will feels an ache lodge in between his ribs, something fiercely cold and painful, but he feels he can breathe easier, now. He is used to taking on this sort of burden. 

“You’ll never make it,” Lisper interjects, disbelievingly. 

Will inhales, feeling more purposeful. He trades brief looks full of understanding with the Indian and the Scot. Deliberately, he turns in his seat until he looks Lisper square in the eye. “Yes,” Will says. “I will.” 

The conversation moves to something else. “Look at her,” the Scot says, nodding to another burned-out farm and fields dotted with dead cattle. “Just look at her. Fought for three bloody years over this place, and what for? Should’ve just given it to the bastards. I mean, who machine-guns cows?”

“Huns with too many bullets,” someone mutters.

“It’s smart,” the Indian says. “They know that if they do not shoot them, we will eat them.”

Will tunes them out. He has satisfied their curiosity and gained their sympathy. He rubs the tin, only barely feeling its edges through layers of tough leather and canvas. 

Within minutes they are swaying to a stop and everyone tenses.

“If it’s another tree . . .” Lisper starts, angrily. 

“Bridge is out!” someone bellows. “Stay put!”

“Oh!” The Private leans back, smiling. “That’s all right, then.”

“I’m off here, then,” Will says, and stands up. “Good luck.”

“Keep some of that for yourself, mate,” one of them responds mildly as he navigates off the back. A chorus starts up, repeating the wish -- “Good luck, guv,” someone says, and another adds “Don’t bollocks it up.”

Outside the lorry, the remains of a town lie across a canal over which a bridge lies, snapped in half by some insurmountable pressure. The ends form a letter V, plunging into and exiting out of the water. A walkway lines the bottom of the far side of the canal, and to either side of the bridge there are stairs sunk from the street down to it.

The Captain has also taken a moment to stretch his legs. “The next bridge is six miles,” he says to Schofield. “We’ll have to divert around.”

The man means well, but . . . “I can’t afford the time, sir,” Will replies. 

The Captain sighs a little, and nods. “Very good.” He starts to turn away, but pauses. “Corporal--” he says slowly, and Will feels a chill settle on him. It is the quiet politeness that sounds warning bells -- Will has never heard anyone use that careful sort of tone for anything less than most dire warning --

“If you happen to find Colonel Mackenzie, make sure you do so in front of witnesses,” says the Captain mildly.

\-- particularly when it comes to interpersonal advice for dealing with one’s immediate superiors.

“These are orders from army command,” Will says. He feels hollow.

“Even so.” The Captain leans forward, ever so slightly. “Some men just . . . live for the fight.”

Will nods. Not much more he can say to that; he tries not to think too hard about it, either. He just adds it to the checklist of mission parameters in his head.

The Captain exchanges well-wishes and disappears back into the convoy. Will ducks into the nearby ditch and waits until the lorries rumble off into the distance. He observes the ruins across the river, but there’s no movement, even ghostly, so far as he can see -- the whole area appears abandoned.

When the convoy is far enough that he is sure he will have a bit of a lead time if they come back along the road, Will relaxes, fractionally. The ditch, mercifully, is fairly dry at the moment; he will not mind being here a while. He reaches into his breast-pocket and pulls out his tin.

“Come on, then,” he says, and cracks it open.

The intent is all it takes; the photos in his tin do not see any light. But there is Blake, pressed against the side of the ditch, clutching a ghostly rifle nervously. 

“We’re getting ready to go over?” he asks, confused.

“No, Blake,” Will says gently, and slips the tin back into his pocket. All the immense pressure of being in the transport has left; he feels an enormous relief that he can speak freely, now. “We’re in a ditch outside of Écoust.”

Blake looks around. He peers over the top of the ditch at the town’s ruins and the twisted, broken bridge over the canal.

“How did -- we were just in a lorry, weren’t we?” Blake demands. He looks at Will and Will can see that his friend is not handling things well. Maybe tucking him into the tin was a bad idea; Blake seems to have reset himself. -- No, Will cannot second-guess himself on this. Ghosts are fragile things; newer ones always tend to be very disoriented by any environmental change. And having died horribly doesn’t help, either. 

“Yes,” Will says, fighting back that memory. “We got stuck in mud.” He opens his mouth again, but closes it; it is very strange. Now that he can answer Blake all he likes, Will finds he does not know what to say.

He thinks he doesn’t need to say anything as a look of relief passes over Blake’s face. His friend relaxes visibly as he says “Thank goodness, I thought I’d gone mad there for a moment. I must’ve slept through the whole ride. I had the most horrible dream! We were in the lorry but no one could see me.” 

Will chokes on rising hysteria. _(“That’s your problem -- you_ never _think!”)_ But that is uncharitable. Blake is dead and Will is a better man than to throw that back in Blake’s face.

“Not even you! I was calling your name but you didn’t answer,” Blake continues blithely. “And then I tried to shake you, but my hands went right through you. Gave me a start, that did. And you were telling someone about our mission and I realized . . . ” He stops, uncertainly, looking to Will for reassurance.

“No, Blake,” Will says, trying for gentle. He manages hoarse. “That wasn’t a dream.”

Blake looks stricken. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

“Do you remember the farm?” Will asks. 

“But that -- but I --” Blake shakes his head in disbelief. He presses his hands to his belly, holds them up. There is blood --

_Blood -- so much blood. It soaks through two rolls of bandage in moments and saturates Blake’s shirt and trousers, staining Will’s hands with red._

_“What’re those?” Blake asks, querulously, looking at the sky. He is as white as the cherry blossoms they left behind in the orchard, life draining out of him and onto Will’s hands. “Are we being shelled?”_

_Will swallows hard around the realization lodged in his throat: Blake is dying. “Those are embers,” he responds. “The barn is on fire.”_

Will shakes his attention to the present. It doesn’t do to dwell.

Blake is trembling, breathing hard. His face twists up and tears roll down his cheeks. 

“It’s all right,” Will tells him, feeling out what to say. After his first few attempts when he was much younger, he had learned not to bother reasoning with new ghosts; but for Blake he will try. “We’re outside of Écoust now. I will go through the city to the river, and I’ll follow the river to the wood. We’ll get there in time to stop the attack.”

“Stop it!” Blake cries, jerking back. “You shouldn’t even be doing this. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, and now I’ve gone and -- and died --”

“For God’s sake, Blake! That doesn’t matter!” Will shouts, furious. His face feels hot and his throat choked and dry. He snaps his mouth shut and wrestles with himself for control, breathing hard through his nose. Blake is staring at him with his mouth hanging open. 

“What I meant to say,” Will says after a moment, when he thinks he can manage, “is that I’m here, now, and that’s all there is to it. And,” he adds, softer, “I’m sorry I couldn’t -- I’m sorry I didn’t save you.”

Blake’s crying again. “Stop that,” Will says, feeling exhausted.

“Then you stop,” Blake retorts, mulish. “You’re leaking, too.”

Will touches his face, surprised -- there is wet streaking down from his eyes. He can’t help it: he laughs. Will wipes the tears away on the back of his jacket sleeve and leans back to look up at the sky.

“Right pair of fools we are,” he says. Blake sighs.

For a time, the only sound is the gentlest touch of wind stirring the grass and whistling faintly through the remnants of the town. Will feels almost like a ghost himself, light enough to drift away. He recognizes the danger in time, though, and shakes himself out of the stupor before he falls asleep. He still needs to get through the town; he can sleep when he’s found the 2nd Devons.

“Do you want to follow me, or should I carry you?” he asks Blake.

Blake appears to have fallen prey to the same lethargy. “What?”

“We need to get moving,” Will tells him. “If you like, I can carry you like I was before -- in my tin.” He pats his breast-pocket to illustrate.

Blake blinks at him. “That was you?” he says, surprised. His face darkens. “Wait, so you could’ve been talking to me in the lorry--”

“Not unless I wanted them to think I’d lost it,” Will interrupts. “Which is what happens when people start talking to ghosts. The last time I did that, I was transferred to the front in Thiepval.”

Blake shuts his mouth with an audible click. Will waits while he mulls this over and takes the opportunity to scan the ruins again and plan how to cross the downed bridge.

“I’ll walk with you,” Blake says at last, and gathers up his ghostly gear. Will nods and together, they get out of the ditch and approach the bridge. 

Up close, it is apparent that to cross the snapped bridge on what used to be the roadway would mean a bit of a swim, and Will can’t tell how deep the water is. He decides to risk balancing on the steel girders, which are separated by only a few feet; he should be able to make it. If he does, he will avoid being soaked. 

“Steady on, Scho,” Blake mutters as Will slings his rifle across his chest and climbs the criss-cross steel to the top. The top girder is several inches wide and steady under his feet; he only has to worry about overbalancing instead of tripping on shattered timber. He holds his arms out for extra security, briefly remembering days as a child, competing with schoolmates to see who could walk the furthest on any available wall at home until they were chased away by irritated adults. When he hears Blake climb up behind him, Will can’t help but smile.

He makes it to the edge where the girder sinks into the water of the canal and pauses, gauging the distance. It looks like only two feet, not more than a yard --

The rifle shot cracks the quiet like a barrage of thunder and misses, barely. Will freezes. 

“Go!” Blake yelps. Will leaps and a second shot whizzes past. He lands on the opposite girder and then drops, automatically calculating the sniper’s angle. He hangs on the far side of the bridge and awkwardly climbs sideways, flinching back every time the sniper shoots and misses. He drops to the cool shade beneath the bridge and huddles against the canal wall as he hurriedly unstraps his rifle.

“He’s on the other side of us,” Blake tells him, flattened against the wall like Will. “In the building with the second-story window overlooking the bridge. I saw movement there.”

Will nods and chambers a round in his rifle. They will have to take out the sniper or risk having the Bosche hear an alarm. He takes the lead and moves towards the set of stairs that they can use to get up onto the road closest to the building, knowing that the sniper will be waiting for them to appear. They will have to be fast and pray that the sniper’s trigger-finger isn’t as quick as they are.

He darts across the opening at the bottom to take cover against the side the sniper can’t see. Blake shouts as the next bullet cracks the pavement right behind him. Will creeps up the steps and doesn’t let himself think about how tempting a target his metal helmet is as he chances a look over the top. He catches a glimpse of movement in the open window and ducks as the sniper sends chips of concrete into the stairwell.

Will presses against the stone and takes two shaky breaths in through his nose, out through his mouth. He stands, aims in the same movement, pulls, and drops back down, already knowing it was a poor shot as the sniper’s nearly takes his head off. He must be calm. He will not succeed if he does not steady himself. He breathes again, slower, in -- out. Then one more deliberate breath in. He stands, aims, pulls -- and there is no answering shot as he drops back into cover. He can feel certainty settling into his bones, though its source is as yet unclear. 

Breathe. Stand, aim, pull -- pull again, advancing up the stairs and onto the street. He hears glass shattering with each shot. He pulls a fifth time, and chambers the next round as he moves out of the window’s line of sight. Three shots left before he must reload.

He enters the building, Blake shadowing him closely. It is empty and they creep up the flight of stairs that leads to the second floor. Tension mounts as they approach the door at the top. He breathes, settles his stance, and pushes.

The door swings open to reveal the sniper, leaning against the wall in the injured sprawl of someone who has been hit and can no longer stand. He raises his pistol and shoots as Will pulls the trigger. 

The last thing Will hears is a shout as he jerks and tumbles backwards into blackness.


	2. Blake

Tom screams for Scho. That fucking rat! He should have shot it when he’d had the chance, before the bloody thing set off the tripwire. How he and Scho weren’t killed immediately is beyond him. He’s not sure why he’s still standing, for that matter; the blast threw him against the wall and gave him a good hard knock, but he staggered up soon enough. Scho did not. Scho is lying on the floor and there is blood and his eyes are closed and he won’t wake up.

“Wake up!” Tom screams at Scho. “Wake up, wake UP!”

The bunker is collapsing on them. Tom hears the rumble of displaced dirt shaken from its foundations. Wood splinters, and more and more earth trickles faster on top of them. They need to get out of here; they need to  _ move. _

But no matter how hard he tries, Tom can’t seem to get a hold on Scho. Tom has a sense that he should be shaking the older man, but whenever he tries, he finds himself kneeling uselessly and screaming for Scho to wake up, damn it! 

The pool of blood behind Scho’s head is not large. It has stopped spreading over the floorboards and murkily reflects red. Scho needs a medic. Scho needs to wake up. Tom should be able to haul Scho upright and watch Scho choke and gag and  _ wake up. _

Tom’s hands go right through his friend. He weeps in frustration. How can he haul Scho out of this tunnel when he isn’t even allowed to grab him? It is not  _ fair, _ he is supposed to pull him up and out, they get out, they get out, Will wakes up and they run and there is light and Will  _ wakes up. _

“Wake up, Scho, wake up,” Tom repeats, uselessly. He tries to pull his friend up. He can see Scho is still breathing, he is not dead, they can make it --

\-- his hand goes through where Scho’s tin is --

\-- and suddenly, things are still. Dark, yes, but -- also -- warm? The tunnel couldn’t have collapsed. There is no weight on him, not dust choking him, and he’d always thought tons of rock and earth would be a lot colder than this -- this --

It comes back to him in a flash. Crossing the bridge, dodging the sniper -- they made it out of the tunnel all right, and beyond it. Tom is dead, but that was because of a dirty Hun pilot who thought stabbing your saviour was an appropriate expression of gratitude and not because of a trapped bunker. 

Tom always prided himself in being up for anything. Whether it was an adventure or a scrap, he would give it a go and usually threw everything he had into it. Things usually came out all right; even his older brother Joe knew that he wouldn’t have to clean up any of Tom’s messes, because Tom had already taken care of it. 

But right now, Tom does not feel as confident. For one thing, he is dead; for another, Scho might be headed that way, too. And there is nothing Tom could do about either of those things. 

He is also fairly certain that right now, he is inside Scho’s tin. Scho mentioned it outside in the ditch, that he could carry Tom that way; and Tom remembers being here before. When he was dreaming of being in the lorry -- wait, no, not a dream, that was Scho being an arse and not telling Tom he was dead -- well, anyway, he’d been scared and confused, part of a crowd but  _ not, _ and then he had wound up here when everything started getting all muddled.

It is quiet, at least. 

Tom is not certain how long he sits there before he becomes aware of a sound: a faint thumping noise, slow but regular. Scho’s heartbeat, Tom realizes after a minute of listening. Which means the warmth must be from the side of the tin closest to Scho’s body. Tom becomes keenly aware that this is the first time he has felt warmth in a long time, as though even his last days alive were years past and not hours ago. Strange that Tom can feel these things in here when he can’t feel them outside; but then, he’s not sure how fitting into a battered old tobacco tin is possible, either. It is soothing. 

Inside the tin are some papers -- letters -- and two photographs. It is dark, but Tom can see them perfectly. Two small children, very young; the eldest can’t be more than three. A woman, maybe a few years older than Tom, and pretty. 

Tom suddenly feels embarrassed. It’s Scho’s family; it’s got to be. Tom has only heard Scho talk about them twice, and he recalls distinctly that he only learned that Scho had a wife and two daughters but a month ago when Tom had won a bottle of rum from another Corporal in a card game and shared it with Scho. They’d gotten proper pissed. Scho’d loosened up enough to tell a story or two of his own, even, which is how Tom finally learned his friend was married. Christ, Scho was so close-mouthed about anything personal he couldn’t even get through telling Tom why he hated going home -- and he probably only did  _ that _ because he’d almost died an hour before. 

_ Come back to us, _ his wife had written in curly penmanship on the back of her photo. 

Tom is not sure how he does it, but he pops right back out in a hurry. Scho kept these things private. It feels wrong that Tom should know them now.

He is back on the stairs in the building the sniper had nested in. Outside, the light is fading. It had been midafternoon when they arrived here and sat in the ditch outside Écoust, but now it is dusk. Scho lays sprawled out at his feet on the landing, his rifle left to rest where it was dropped at the top. If it weren’t for the faintest rise and fall of his uniform, Tom would think Scho were dead. 

Tom feels a wave of remorse. Tom also shot when the door swung open, but fat lot of good it did Scho. Scho’s the one who got the bastard, just like he’d shot the pilot who’d done in Tom. And Tom can’t do anything now; he can’t try to move Scho or stop the bleeding, can’t run and find an aid station. 

Thunder rumbles, close by. A soft rain starts to patter in the streets and on what’s left of the roof and the light fades more. 

In the room with the sniper, a soft glow catches Tom’s eye. An outline crouches at the window, the figure of a man scanning the ruins alertly. He does not appear to notice Tom -- or anything else, for that matter, as he is kneeling practically atop his own body, sitting slumped where he died. Tom wishes he knew more about ghosts, at least enough to know what to do with the dead German -- his hands tighten on his rifle. 

Tom looks down in surprise. He thought he’d lost that. He hadn’t had it a moment ago, or while he was in the tin, or when he was trying to drag Scho out of the rubble --

The sniper’s ghost exclaims something and leaps up. With no explanation, the ghost jogs down the stairs, passing Tom and Scho without even a second look.

Tom realizes that there must be more Bosche in the town. In retrospect, he and Scho should have anticipated this. A perfectly good ruined city was vastly preferable to being bogged down in the trenches from any soldier’s perspective, with the additional prospects of looting

He walks to the sniper’s roost and looks out. In the rain, the ruins are just a blur. If there is any movement, it is masked by the movement of so much water.

Tom goes back to Scho. He hasn’t moved. 

Tom watches Scho’s chest rise and fall, thinking hard. He cannot wake Scho at the moment, nor can he offer any sensible aid. But . . . a ghost would be perfect at reconnaissance. Perhaps he can go scout out where the Bosche are. Can he leave a message?

Try as he might, Tom cannot figure out how to write anything out. He hasn’t got any pens nor paper, and he can’t seem to . . . to . . . whatever it is that makes his rifle reappear. But for pens and paper. So he can’t leave any message for Scho, in case he wakes up. And the thought of leaving Scho, helplessly unconscious on the floor --

\-- there is nothing but a pile of rubble. The torch Scho dropped illuminates the dislodged dust and not much else. Tom shouts, and shouts again, and hears Scho (or is it an echo?) and his hands find one boot --

\-- but they aren’t in the tunnel! Tom finds himself gasping for air, and he wasn’t even the one who nearly died from being buried in the rock. He is kneeling next to Scho instead, hands trying fruitlessly to haul the other man up but just plunging straight through. Again. What the hell is going on? 

He shakes himself out of it. He has to try. At the very least, Tom can tell Scho what he finds -- when Scho wakes up. And he  _ will _ wake up, because if he were dead, Tom would’ve seen his ghost. 

Tom resolutely stomps down the stairs, determined to outdo the Hun in something, and ignores the sense of forboding that seems to increase with every step. He will be fine. He is already dead; there is nothing more that can affect him.

It is still raining outside. It is only a light shower -- the kind that makes flowers grow, his mother used to say. He can smell the freshness of the rain, the newly-turned earth of plowing season, and even if he is a red-blooded Englishman Tom steps forward and relishes the feel of it on his skin --

\-- dirt pours from the ceiling, pattering on his upturned face. It gets in his eyes and his mouth when he opens it, and clogs his nose something fierce. The heavier bits are clods and gravel, the weight of them threatening to bury both of them alive even as he digs through the rock, hands scraping and being scraped, stinging pain of skin rubbed raw as he searches desperately --

\-- but where is Scho? He isn’t here, he was here but a moment ago, why can’t Tom find him? Tom is frantic and his movements become frenzied. He cannot leave his friend to be buried alive, he can’t! 

“Scho!” he screams. The earth is agitated further. Tom read once that loud noises underground could cause mineshafts to collapse, but he can’t stop himself from shouting. “Scho! Scho!”

The torch flares, and explodes. Other traps in the tunnels pop and fizzle. He cannot leave without Scho, he cannot escape the bunker -- 

“Blake?” Scho asks.

Tom is yanked out of his nightmare. His mind clears, like fog wafting off a field in brilliant noon-day sun. There is Scho, leaning heavily on the threshold of the building. He looks dazed. He looks like he should not be moving. 

“Scho!” Tom gasps. 

Scho staggers towards him. Tom only made it a few feet from the door, but it takes Scho a long moment to cross the ground. “What’re you doing out here?” he asks, slurring the words a little. Tom has never known that to be a good thing, but since Scho is no longer lying insensate on a floor from a gunshot wound, he will take what he can get.

_ Pop. _ Scho is illuminated by bright light that is not static. The shifting light makes Tom realize how exhausted Scho must be, highlighting deep wells and creases on the face of someone not much older than Tom is, considering. 

It is very dark now, and the rain has stopped. An angry glow lights the sky down the road. Tom finds he can move at last; he reaches for Scho, trying to ground himself. 

His hands pass through Scho where before he could grasp stiff wool and hard, woven cotton. Scho shushes him like he is a wild animal, one hand coming up to hover close -- not quite touching -- Tom’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he tells Tom. “See? We’re in Écoust. We’re almost there.”

“What are you -- are you daft?” Tom yells. All thought of his -- his fits -- leaves his mind in an instant. Tom is so sick with relief and so angry at the same time he does not know what he will do. Scho has spent the whole damn day out of it on the floor, but he thinks he knows better than Tom? “Of course we’re in Écoust! You were shot in Écoust!”

There is another pop in the distance, followed by a hiss. A flare shoots into the sky. The magnesium shines brilliantly, burning one's eyes even as it issues a thick plume of smoke. Scho staggers forward, mesmerized. 

“Scho, wait -- Scho!” Tom says. But it is too late.

The first shot sounds like shattering glass, and is clearly misaimed. Scho startles, looking back at Tom, but does not grasp the immediate peril. It takes a second shot that pings off the wrought-iron fence for him to recognize the danger. Scho jumps and then sprints like a rabbit, faster than Tom would have thought possible for someone so old. The flare overhead dips and plunges the road into darkness.

Tom hurls himself after. He can’t leave Scho -- he just can’t. And Scho isn’t himself. He is barely able to stand and now he is in a hostile environment that will do its best to kill him, and Scho is not able to be clever about it, not right now.

The shooting flares do not seem to affect Tom’s ability to see, and he can follow Scho sprinting down the road with ease even as the buildings’ long shadows swallow the other man. When the next flare pops, Scho throws himself to one side and flattens out on the rubble beside the road. He looks around frantically: up at the flare, to his left, ahead, to his right. The expression on his face is a cross between calculation and desperation.

Tom has never seen Scho like this, but, he realizes, he should not be surprised. William Schofield survived the Somme at Thiepval and, before that, Fromelles. A man would learn a few things going through all of that.

The flare dips and shadows begin to lengthen. Scho bolts upright and is off again, a last shot following him and falling uselessly short as the night reclaims the city. 

This time he doesn’t stop even as another flare arcs high overhead. Tom can see Scho watching its trajectory jerkily, before seeming to realize that he had long escaped the sniper’s range. Scho lurches to the right and ducks behind a solid wall. He leans on it as he struggles to get air and claws at his collar until the top snap gives way and he gasps, deeply, sagging into the brickwork. 

“It’s all right,” Tom says, tries to reassure, and Scho nods like he hears what Tom is saying. But at the next popping fizzle, Scho skitters backwards, wide-eyed, into what is left of a bar, narrowly avoiding colliding with a body sprawled over the countertop. “Scho!”

They stumble through the building and around a corner. The light of the flares sink into the background. Up ahead, something is burning. Flames encase the largest building they’ve seen yet, lighting a wide square with a dull roar. 

Scho seems to have run out of energy, barely putting one foot in front of the other. He sways with each step. Tom is now deeply, terribly afraid -- what should happen if Scho were to fall now? 

“Keep going, Scho,” he urges. “You can’t stop here. Don’t stop.”

“Why’d they set it on fire?” Scho asks inanely. Tom looks at the flames swirling through the empty arches and smashed out windows and finds he cannot answer --

\-- sparks swirl at the edges of his vision. “What’re those?” he asks. He feels so cold. “Are we being shelled?” 

“Those are embers.” Scho’s voice echoes back as though coming from a deep well. “The barn is on fire.”

_ What barn, _ Tom thinks,  _ we haven’t any barns in the trenches _ \--

“Blake?” Scho asks, breaking him out of it. Tom jerks his gaze away from the building, nauseous. He senses something growing, something seeping in that will fill him up until he chokes on the overflow. Why does he keep drifting like this? What is happening to him? 

He notices a silhouette coming towards them. “Scho,” he warns as the figure slows, then raises its rifle and starts to run forward. “Scho!”

Scho looks but does not seem to understand. The silhouette shoots. Scho takes off again, almost back the way they came, but ends up skirting the square instead. It is a straight shot here, and there is remarkably little rubble; but the soldier behind them has a clear line of sight, too. Tom just runs and prays hard, harder than he has ever done as the second and third shots miss. He hears a shout and a fourth shot, one that goes wild -- he chances a look back and sees the soldier has tripped and is struggling to get up.

Tom turns around in time to see Scho slipping down through a shutter to a cellar level. He skids through the opening himself, noting distantly that the shutter closes halfway through him on the way down.

Together they stand, listening to the soldier sprint past their hiding place. Scho, panting, becomes completely still -- unbreathing, unblinking -- watching wide-eyed as the shadow runs past. He gasps quietly when it is gone.

“Christ, Scho,” Tom murmurs to him, heart pounding hard. He lets air whoosh out of him a relieved sigh. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

Scho flicks a look over to Tom and nods shortly, but doesn’t answer out loud. He resettles his grip on his rifle with hands that tremble slightly. He starts down the small corridor they are in, and freezes.

So does Tom. He had dismissed the light as slanting through the cracks and slats, coming from the square -- but almost immediately next to them is a doorway, shrouded with a thin sheet. The glow comes from there.

Scho raises his rifle and stalks forward before Tom can say anything about reconnaissance. He raises his rifle and follows, swallowing his panicked urge to call Scho back like an errant child. 

Inside is empty. There is a tiny fire in a small hearth, whose light allows them to see a sparsely-furnished room: a folding screen in one corner, a squashy and battered leather armchair in front of the fire. A small mattress, neatly made up, in front of a dresser and a small side-table with a little oil lamp on it. 

Tom hears the noise when Scho does; they both swivel towards the screen. A young woman stands next to it. She shakily raises her hands and pleads.

Scho is already lowering his rifle. “Not German,” he rasps, raising one hand of his own. “English --  _ Anglais _ \-- friend. I am a friend.”

_ “Anglais?” _ she repeats.

“Yes.  _ Oui,” _ Scho corrects himself. “Is this Écoust? Uh,  _ c’est Écoust? _ ”

“What are you on about? Of course it is Écoust,” Tom tells him as she also confirms this is Écoust. He looks closely at Scho. The man is white as a sheet even in the firelight. Tom has a bad feeling about this.

Scho does not even look at him in response, focusing solely on the woman. She asks, in French, where the others are. “Others?” she repeats in English.

“No. No others,” Scho answers. 

“I’m still here,” Tom reassures him quietly. 

Scho blinks, gaze darting in Tom’s direction. Tom realizes that he’s not going to get much of a response out of Scho -- Scho is struggling to stay in the present. Tom will have to leave him to it. Still -- Scho’s French was always atrocious. 

“Just me,” Scho tells her. “I have to get somewhere. I need to find a wood. Trees?”

_ “Les arbres,” _ Tom tells him quickly.

_ “Les arbres?” _ Scho repeats. He pauses, looking frustrated, and Tom realizes Scho can’t remember the name of the wood.

_“Croisilles,”_ Tom prompts.

_ “Croiset,” _ Scho tries.

“Ah!  _ Croisilles,” _ the woman says, understanding at last.  _ “La rivière -- _ river? It flows south, to  _ Croisilles.” _

Scho nods, repeating the instructions to himself. Tom sees the wince as the movement doubtlessly reminds Scho he’s still been bloody shot, and the older man reaches up to feel his head. He sways so violently Tom jerks forward to catch him.

“Careful!” Tom scolds. “Don’t touch that, you’ll make it worse.”

Scho blinks, and Tom realizes the woman was also talking. “Sit,” she insists, gesturing to the chair. 

“Yes,” Tom says immediately. Time is passing, but -- “Sit down before you fall down and hurt yourself even more.”

Scho huffs a little, and Tom likes to think he sees the faintest flicker of a smile as Scho carefully leans his rifle against the chair and practically falls into the seat. He leans forward a little, raising a hand to try feeling out his injury again. “Stop --” Tom starts, agitated now. Scho needs to stay awake; what if Tom gets another one of those episodes? He needs Scho around to knock him out of them.

“Shh,” the girl says, touching Scho’s hand and stopping it. Scho stills abruptly. She softly guides his hand away, shushing him again.

It is uncomfortably intimate to watch as the woman tends to the wound. Tom looks away as she gently tilts Scho’s head forward. In the trenches, there is no gentleness; when not on the front lines, the best a soldier can hope for if he’s not at home on leave is a girl who can be bought for an hour or two. To the best of Tom’s knowledge, Scho has never indulged in that sort of thing. But he has not been home on leave since Tom joined the 8th, either. 

He twitches around briefly when Scho hisses in pain. The woman replaces her hand with a handkerchief. Scho’s eyes close and he groans, sinking back into the touch as though everything weighing him down has just melted away like snowfall in spring.

Tom studiously looks at the floor. “Thank you,” he hears Scho say hoarsely after a moment or two passes.

A baby’s cry draws his attention. It comes from the dresser. Tom looks back at the two of them in time to see Scho take the handkerchief as the woman gets up from where she knelt on the floor, shake her skirts, and hurry to the little side table. She turns up the light in the lamp and coos to an open dresser drawer.

“No,” Tom says, blankly. “Here?”

Scho, that arse, gets up instead of staying where he is and resting sensibly. Tom remembers the photos in the breast-pocket tin and thinks that no matter what he says on the subject of Scho getting some bloody rest, Scho would probably pay no attention to it now. He walks over to the small mattress as the French woman hefts a baby girl out of the drawer.  _ “Mon petit,” _ she tells him. 

“A girl?” Scho asks.

She nods, smiling.  _ “Une fille,” _ she confirms, and kneels on the mattress. She settles the baby against her.

Scho kneels opposite and reaches out. “Hey,” he says softly as the baby frets, wiggling some fingers to catch her attention. “It’s all right. Bonjour. Bonjour, little one.” 

“Well,” Tom mutters, mostly to himself, “I suppose this counts. At least you’re not out getting shot at.” He looks around the room, half-listening to the conversation as the woman asks if Scho has children. There probably isn’t another baby hidden away here, but there probably wasn’t one in the first place. Who knows what other surprises this French woman might have? 

Tom’s attention is drawn again when he hears jingling metal, rustling canvas. Scho struggles out of his kit and hurriedly pulls out all his rations. “Here,” he says, voice stronger than it was earlier. “Take it -- all of it. For you and the child.”

“Hold on a moment, Scho,” Tom says, alarmed. He heads back to the mattress and tries to take some of the food back. He tsks at himself as his hands go through the packages. “Keep some for yourself! You haven’t eaten in ages.”

The woman looks at the food and shakes her head. The baby can’t eat it. “She’s too little,” Tom translates for Scho. “She needs milk.”

“Milk?” Scho repeats. He fumbles for his canteen and opens it for the woman to smell.

Tom blinks. He’d forgotten they had found milk. He hadn’t even gotten a taste of it before --

\-- the dreadful sound of a sputtering engine, growing louder as the plane sails over the hill and ploughs right for them. In desperation, Tom throws himself to the ground as it smashes into the barn --

\-- “They went to sea in a sieve, they did,” Scho chants. The baby quiets, fascinated both by the strange words and soft, strong voice. Tom staggers up from where he has fallen to his knees as Scho continues to recite. 

Tom feels his breath move harshly in and out. Worse, he feels tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He is humiliated. He wishes this -- whatever the  _ fuck _ this is -- would  _ stop. _

A bell tolls. Tom does not grasp the significance immediately, too busy trying not to cry like a baby. It is the woman’s exclamation that alerts him to Scho shrugging back into his kit and staggering back to pick up his rifle, still propped on the chair. 

“I have to go,” Scho tells her. 

“Stay. Stay!” she argues, rocking the baby. “Please.”

“I’m sorry,” says Scho. He jerks his head at Tom in question --  _ are you ready? _ \-- and Tom moves to trail him once again. 

“Let’s go,” Tom tells him, rattled. 

They set out. For all that it is six in the morning, the sky is hardly lighter than before. Dawn hasn’t broken yet, but it will, soon. They can risk no more delay.

Tom mutters all this to Scho as they speed down dark, quiet streets. Scho has a new energy that Tom is glad to see, even if he doesn’t quite understand it. 

It certainly comes in handy when one of the Bosche stumbles out of a building and Scho jukes back, darting to hide behind the outer corner. Tom and Scho peer around it to watch as the soldier pukes his guts out onto the cobblestones.

“We can go around,” Tom whispers to Scho, nodding to a hole in the wall. “While he’s out here.”

Scho looks at it and nods, mouth tight. He moves fast and quiet, but it turns out to be futile: he walks right into a young German soldier who freezes at the sight of an enemy. 

“Fuck!” Tom says.

Scho doesn’t waste time and rams into the German. He walks the soldier back, hand over the man’s mouth, into one of the supporting pillars. In the street, the drunk soldier shouts incoherently.

“Shh,” Scho tells the soldier. He nods, expression making it a question. The young German nods back, slowly.

“Scho,” Tom starts, then stops. The overwhelming feeling is back. He can feel blood trickling down his thigh beneath his trousers, can almost hear it drip -- 

Scho backs away slowly, so slowly. For a minute, Tom thinks it’s going to work out -- the boy will keep quiet and he and Scho can be on their way.

The soldier shouts something -- a name. Scho leaps forward to quiet him, but the boy is fast. They struggle; Scho’s rifle is dropped and gets kicked away. Somehow Scho trips and the Bosche gets the upper hand.

They fall into the shadow, but Tom still sees the lethal glint of a long knife. He bites the inside of his mouth savagely to keep the fits at bay and focuses fiercely on what is happening in front of him. He must be prepared to help -- he must!

The enemy brings the knife up, but Scho grabs his wrist and prevents him from bringing it back down. Tom cannot see what happens then, but the enemy soldier drops the knife with a clang and Scho rolls on top of him. The only sounds are little choked-off grunts of effort and, when Scho wraps his hands around the enemy’s throat, gurgling. 

Scho is dead silent, white with effort. The soldier gouges at Scho’s eyes, slaps at Scho’s face -- for naught. Scho has the longer reach and levers himself up with his feet to bring as much of his weight to bear as he can. Tom feels disoriented, sick. This is desperate and dirty and Scho shouldn’t have to -- Scho --

The drunken soldier wanders back in, slurring in German. He bumbles around the fire. Scho risks a quick look at him as the boy’s struggles become sluggish. 

“I’ll watch him,” Tom manages after two attempts through a mouth as dry as sand. “If he heads this way, I’ll warn you.”

Scho does not let up. He bears down on the enemy. The German boy’s hands fall to the floor and his eyes close and Scho does not let up.

“Eh, Baumer? Baumer?” Christ, the drunken one! 

“Go!” Tom tells Scho, seeing the other German stumbling to their corner. “Now, Scho!”

Scho needs no prompting. He is up and moving before he is even properly upright. “Your rifle!” Tom shouts, but Scho staggers into the drunken soldier and  _ sprints. _ Tom follows, swearing.

A shout of alarm rings out. “Not that way!” Tom screams, seeing soldiers running towards them from the direction Scho is heading in. Scho spots them and abruptly changes directions, cutting through the remains of a house. Tom closes the distance and the two run, down one alley and then another, down a brick stairwell and around and under and between, dodging bullets and avoiding rubble and absolutely not stopping. 

The edge of the city opens up. A bridge that hasn’t been smashed to bits crosses the river. 

Tom knows instantly what Scho will do, and he leaps off the edge with his friend without a second thought. The drop is heart-stoppingly long, and then they hit the water --

_ “-- it’s all right, you’re safe now. We’ll get you some water --” Tom sees the German pilot suddenly focus on him, some sort of realization spreading across his face. He scrabbles at his belt and draws a knife. _

_ “Wait, stop -- STOP --” _

_ The knife is cold and sinks so easily through the leather and wool of his uniform. He jerks backward more from the shock than the pain, for there isn’t any pain. The knife slides out and Tom thinks, _ that can’t have happened just now, _right as he hears the crack of Scho’s rifle and the German pilot jerks once, twice, and dies. _

_ “No no no no no,” he hears. Tom pulls aside his jacket, fingers scrabbling at fabric until they find the finer linen of his shirt. There is a hole in it. He looks at Scho, who is running towards him. He’s dropped his helmet and rifle somewhere. _

_ “The bastard got me,” Tom says in disbelief, watching blood darken his shirt. Somehow, somewhere, he knows:  _ this is it. _ His mind shies from the thought even as his knees give out. Scho catches him as he falls. _

_ “We have to stop the bleeding,” Scho says, quickly. He pulls out a roll of bandage. “It’s alright, it’s going to be alright. We’re going to stand up now, yeah?” _

_ The pain comes when Scho pushes the bandage down. Tom screams -- _

\-- “Blake! BLAKE!” --

\--  _ “We have to get to an Aid Post. Come on, it’s not far.” _

_ “Just bring a doctor here,” Tom says, thickly. He does not want to move. He cannot seem to move. The sky whirls overhead. _

_ “Come on. I’ll carry you --” _

\-- “TOM!” --

_ \-- he is cold, so cold. He wants to shiver but his body won’t move. “You’ll recognise him,” Tom whispers. The words seem to be welling up from somewhere a long way down. They’re in his own head and he can barely hear them. “He looks just like me. But older.”  _

_ He cannot feel Scho’s hands on his and he is so cold -- _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive thanks to Pavuvu, who is lovely and wonderful and probably secretly God, and without whom this fic would not be written! 
> 
> Also, HUGE THANKS TO ALL YOU AMAZING REVIEWERS! Your enthusiasm and comments spurred me to new heights!


	3. Schofield

The cold smashes into Will. He would gasp if he could breathe but he doesn’t; he holds his breath tight in his chest and lets himself sink down, down, down.

He is still disoriented. He notes this immediately. Perhaps he has been aware of it since he woke stiffly, in the stairwell, pain throbbing through every nerve with each beat of his heart; the sense of blood slicking his fingers, black in the overcast night, comes to mind. He’d crawled up the stair for his rifle, then, and slip-slid back down them all to find Blake frozen just outside, locked in some horror. 

He can’t remember what it was Blake was so frightened by, but Will distantly understands this loss of detail as aftereffects of the head wound. He lets it go for now.

Will’s feet touch the bottom of the river. He feels the drag of the current, strong and faster than he likes, pulling on his limbs. He kicks off the river bottom and pushes back up. His movements feel sluggish.

His head breaks the surface and he sucks in air. Almost immediately, weight on his chest and shoulders pushes him back down. An alarm goes off in his head. Something ignites in him; Will fights back.

There is something he has forgotten. He needs to remember. Something important, something he needs to fight for -- Blake!

“Blake!” he shouts, reaching out, and chokes as water floods his mouth. He tries again. “BLAKE!”

Will can’t really see anything with the way the water splashes so, but he knows, he  _ knows _ that Blake is in trouble. He leaped for the river the same as Will. But Blake is a new ghost and barely able to keep it together from minute to minute; he will not survive the river if Will doesn’t do something.

He looks around, desperately, pulled along by the current. He cannot tell if there is a ghost -- or a ghost’s disintegrating spirit --  _ please, no -- _

He snatches at a cluster of overhanging branches, praying. For a moment he stands against the current. He looks back and sees --

\-- nothing, just water --

\-- a flash --

“TOM!” he howls, and  _ pulls. _

It vanishes. Will feels something both more and less than tangible slam into him and he loses his grip, tumbling back into the swirling waters of the river. He holds onto it -- Blake -- and blindly stuffs him into the one thing Will knows will come out of this all right, even if Will doesn’t.

Now he is drowning, water flooding his mouth and nose. The weight bearing down on him is unsupportable. His head pounds thunderously as his body begs for air.

_ His kit. _

His kit. The webbing! 

The current grows faster as Will pulls at the buckles and straps, trying to claw free. His arms tangle in his gear. His mouth and nose clear the surface briefly and he gulps in air before his webbing’s weight drags him down again. Will begins to feel the swoop and scalloping within the current that marks the river water curving around rocks hidden below its height. Up ahead, rocks protrude from the river’s surface. One is dead ahead.

Will takes a chance and does his best to turn, angling so his webbing takes the brunt of the impact. He is knocked breathless, but the jagged edges catch at his gear. One of his arms is pulled free from the entanglement as the current continues to pull him along before the rock loses its hold. Will ignores the ache that settles into his shoulder and undoes the last buckle, letting the gear slip off the other shoulder and he is free and floating. He spits out some water and breathes, in and out, giddy.

Dazed, he lets the current carry him. He needed to follow the river out to the wood, anyway, he reasons. The orders and the photos are safe in his tin. And now that he can breathe, it isn’t a terrible way to travel.

He . . .  _ pushes, _ for lack of a better word, feeling out the presence in his tin. This presence is different from the ones he picked up in the square -- the crowd who were in front of the burning church. Soldiers -- some English, most German -- French civilians. (Three children.) The fire kept them away, for some reason -- they couldn’t approach the churchyard while it was burning. He’d have to ask the Grim about that. For now, they were lining his tunic, slipped into the stitches there. 

\-- Well, some were, anyway. Will remembers he’d fit some of them into the various bits and bags the army mandated be hung on the webbing. He will feel guilty about that, later.

Will thinks each thought like a clock-stroke, something immutable. He is dangerously -- whatever it is that describes someone who is -- exhausted? Automatic. Operating on, on -- on instinct. Immediacy. 

This presence here in his tin feels familiar, at least. Maybe smaller than it was, but he wasn’t really paying attention before -- was Will able to make a comparison? He summons enough energy to fret over this for a long moment. He cannot tell without calling it out himself, but . . . Ultimately, Will won’t risk Blake’s welfare over hysterics. Calling Blake out into the open, into so much moving water -- that would be murder, for a new ghost. 

(Will didn’t take Baumer with him. Baumer, who’d tried flowing into the now-filthy bandage wrapped around his left hand. To poison Will, no doubt, as though he weren’t already poisoned from the barbed wire and Kropp’s rotting chest, toxic like the churned soup between the Allied and German lines and Blake’s blood -- )

With the decision made, Will feels his attention settle firmly on his surroundings. The current has picked up speed, he notices, seeing the landscape around him move at a steady clip. Then, abruptly, Will realises the roar he hears is not just the pounding in his head. He flails against the current with no thought other than to attempt to slow down and is flung into space. 

If he screams, he can’t hear it.

When he at last resurfaces, retching up water, the memory of the experience is already lost to him. He can feel it walled off in his mind and hasn’t the energy to care. 

The water here is still, the current gentle. He spots a thick fallen branch floating just ahead and strokes towards it as though swimming through mud. He can barely move. He tucks an arm around it and turns to float on his back.

He is so tired.

Trees line the banks. It is lighter now. He feels as though he should be somewhere. His eyes slip shut.

\-- he chokes, inhaling water. His body forces him to jerk towards the surface and Will splutters, feeling the uncomfortable pressure of liquid being forced through his airways. He coughs until it is easier to breathe.

The peace of this wooded place lulls him. He . . . has somewhere he needs to be . . . he wishes he had just fallen asleep and not woken up at all. 

Something white flutters from the sky. More follow.

Slowly, he turns his head to look at the water. It takes him ages to realise -- blossoms. Like the ones on the chopped-down cherry trees. In the orchard by the farm. The farm where Blake --

\--  _ “I know the way. I’m going to head south-east until I hit Écoust.” _

_ “It’ll be dark by then,” Blake whispers, frets. _

_ “That won’t bother me,” Will swears. -- _

\-- Will has somewhere he needs to be.

He huffs out a breath and lets go of the branch. Rolls. Gathers his thoughts and starts to swim forward. It is light now, but . . .  _ shortly after dawn, _ Erinmore said.  _ After. _ And he has reached Croisilles at last. 

There is a sort of dam ahead, a tree trunk that has lodged in the banks. He can haul himself out once he reaches it. It makes as good a stopping point as any. 

He swims, feeling dimly like he can do it. He can still reach the 2nd Devons in time. He is almost there. He has reached the dam and he --

\-- this wood should not give under his weight --

\--  _ he crawls over Miller, who lies unmoving, face-down in the mud. All he can think is that at least Miller’s body is firmer ground than the soup the man suffocated in, making it easier to retreat -- _

\-- the current threatens to drag him down beneath the dead and Will panics. He thrashes, fights everything, struggles for the shore. The corpses seem to grasp at him like the ghosts do, but horribly real, now. He frees himself from the last bloated face and crawls up the bank, staggering over the trunk as he tries to flee. He stumbles and falls to his hands and knees on uneven ground only a few feet further. He feels himself wracked by great convulsions. 

Will cries.  __ For the fear of having lost Blake’s spirit in the river; for his daughters  _ (the baby in Écoust), _ whom he misses with every breath he draws. For his wife. For the ghosts he dropped in the river. And even for fucking Sergeant Bartle who sodding cocked up their first charge at Thiepval through his own spectacular bumbling and died alongside the three-quarters of the section he sentenced to death in the doing. Will sobs until he can’t tell if he’s crying or laughing and just shakes.

It is when he finds himself gasping quietly into the grass that he hears the unearthly strain of a hymn. 

Will is hardly conscious of getting up. Everything around seems to still, held immobile by the song. He ghosts through silent woods until he finds the singer, surrounded by a company of men sprawled throughout a clearing. 

There is a tree. He puts a hand to it and finds himself sliding down to sit on the ground, leaning against it.

He has nothing left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, a heads up -- chapter count has been upped to 5. I struggled with this chapter a bit because it turned into a monster, then more of a monster, and then perspective hell; so I decided to cut it early where it fit best. I know it's a bit short, but the next one will be suitably lengthy (and is already mostly written), so don't worry!


	4. Blake

Tom shivers.

Has Joe taken all the covers, again?

There is warmth, nearby. Sleepily, Tom rolls towards it. If Joe elbows him, he swears to God, Tom will pinch him right where it  _ really  _ hurts. 

Joe doesn’t elbow him. Joe is patting the mattress. 

The sound gets in Tom’s ear until he can’t ignore it.

“What’re you doing?” Tom slurs. Feels the seduction of sweet, cool darkness; of somnolence. “I’m trying to sleep here.”

The patting doesn’t stop. If anything, it speeds up.  _ For fuck’s sake. _ Is he still upset about what Tom did with Joe’s favorite taw? Tom has already apologized  _ and _ done Joe’s washing up, too. 

“Oi,” Tom says, annoyed. He sits up --

\-- into darkness.

This isn’t the room he shared with Joe at home; how odd. In fact, he’s not quite sure where he is. Tom thinks about that a moment.

The patting is still there. It sounds different, now -- more a thump than a pat. More immediate. 

The warmth is also there. Tom edges as close to it as he can get; the other side is absolutely freezing.

. . . the other side of what?

The thumping is now a hammering. Tom covers his ears with his hands but he can’t escape the noise: it thunders throughout him like artillery bombardment --

\-- but he can’t be being shelled; Scho told him it was a burning barn. Scho . . . Schofield. William? No, Will. Scho.

Now that he thinks about it, Tom remembers he hasn’t shared a room with Joe at home for nearly ten years. Not since that incident with Joe’s secret photographs. 

But they’re right here! Or -- wait. These photographs are different. Two small children, very young; a woman, who is pretty. They are familiar. They are Scho’s -- which means . . . 

Tom is suddenly aware that he is dead. He is currently inside a small tobacco tin, with  _ VIRGINIA _ imprinted on a hinged lid, because Tom is a ghost. The hammering is -- well, it’s stopped hammering, actually, it’s back to the sort of thumping it was before -- anyway, it’s Scho’s heart, because he keeps the little metal box in his breast-pocket at all times, and because Tom really doubts anyone will go out of their way to shell someone’s tin. 

But here Tom is stymied. He can’t figure out how to get out. He thinks he remembers doing it before, even if he can’t recall the circumstances, but try as he might, Tom cannot seem to will himself to leave the metal confines of the tin. Something warns him:  _ not yet. _

So Tom feels out the contours of the shaped metal instead. He must go in circles (squares) (rectangles?) for ages, the time drags on so; he almost starts to dream about being all tucked in and ready for bed at the tender age of eight again. 

Then he wonders why he is back in the tin in the first place. Did Scho pull him in? Did Tom touch it by accident again? Is this some sort of ghost thing, that you need to find an object to haunt? Ohoho, that might be it. No wonder Aunt Polly loathed the Egyptian urn Uncle Jacob displayed on their mantle back home -- Tom bet that if he convinced Schofield to visit, Scho’d find some poor soul stuck in it. Hmm. He should probably convince Scho to visit anyway, if only to make sure Aunt Polly didn’t accidentally set it off somehow. She had a knack for that sort of thing, Tom’s mother always said.

But that means that Scho has to get home first, and make it to --

\-- Joe! Joe is in danger! Joe is going to die if they don’t get to the 2nd Devons! 

Tom explodes into a panic. And apparently, that is enough to catapult him out of Scho’s tin. He skids through a tree and staggers through some bloke sitting on the ground, who gasps and shivers, hard. 

Tom barely notices the soldier’s reaction. Instead, Tom looks around, frantic. Scho can’t be far.

He is in a wood; trees gently shade the carpeting of old leaves and needles. The area is filled with soldiers. A full company, at least, all seated around one lone man who is singing in the centre. Tom is on the outskirts of it all, half-in and half-out of two different lads who are looking a little green around the gills.

He scans the faces immediately around him. And -- Tom has to look twice to make sure, but then he sees him, half-hidden by the same tree Tom went flying through. 

Scho looks like he’s been through absolute hell. He’s leaning against the tree, soaked to the bone; helmet, rifle, and now his webbing and jacket, gone. His hair is plastered to his head, his lips are blue, and he’s so white the freckles of childhood long made faint by being, you know, old, stand out starkly. He watches the singer with one of those thousand-yard stares Tom has only seen on veterans who were kept on the front line for too long and it is so, so clear to Tom that Scho is past the point of caring about much of anything. 

Tom jitters in place a moment, torn. He feels awful about this, but . . . Joe. Joe is too important. He feels resolve stiffening his spine.

“Scho,” he says. “Scho, you have to find the Devons. Yeah?”

Scho doesn’t blink. Doesn’t seem to hear Tom at all. Maybe he can’t hear Tom over the song?

“Scho,” Tom says, louder. He kneels in front of Scho and tries to meet Scho’s gaze. “Scho, are these the Devons? Where are you?”

Tom startles as the soldiers suddenly get up all around them. “D Company, move out!” someone shouts over the assemblage. The wood, held silent by the song floating in the air, is now lively with the sounds of two hundred men getting up to go do . . . something.

“You all right, mate?” someone closer asks, kneeling beside them.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tom answers automatically -- then realises the speaker is talking to Scho, not him. Three Privates cluster around Scho (and Tom, by extension), all examining him like some sort of specimen in a botanical garden. 

“Where’re you from?” the same person asks. He’s a freckly ginger lad, and he keeps his voice gentle. 

“We’re from the 8th and we’re looking for the Devons,” Tom says loudly, desperately, trying to get Scho to snap out of whatever state he’s in. Scho needs rest, and food, and an Aid Post, he needs them badly -- but Tom needs Scho to finish this job, first. Tom needs Scho to save Joe.

“He’s probably got the wind up,” the second one says, obviously not hearing. Tom feels like he could scream and reels it in, gritting his teeth over all the things he’d like to shout at them all.

“Well he’s not one of ours,” says the first.

“He’s bloody soaked,” the third comments in broad Scots.

“The Devons!” Tom yells at the ginger. “We’re looking for the Devons, for fuck’s sake!”

“Fuck it,” says the second one with a shrug. Tom swears a bloody streak. “Let’s just pick him up and take him with us.” 

Scho stirs; he blinks, slowly. “Have to find the Devons,” he says, still unseeing.

“Yes!” Tom exclaims, and leans in close. “Come on, Scho, you can do this,” he urges his friend. “Please!”

“The Devons,” Scho says, louder. “I have to find the Devons.”

“Please,” Tom adds to the ginger.

The gingery Private shares a look with the other two. 

“We’re the Devons,” he says, bemused.

Scho moves at last. He sucks in a breath and focuses and  _ finally _ sees Tom, then looks at the ginger and the other two Privates. “You’re the Devons,” he repeats, as though he doesn’t understand the words.

“Yes, Corp.”

“Thank God,” Tom says, almost faint with relief. They made it.  _ They made it. _

Scho frowns. “Why haven’t you gone over?” he asks, looking around again. Taking in the surrounding company of men all chattering as they prep their gear. Tom feels a surge of understanding and renewed panic seizes him. 

“Come on, Scho,” Tom pleads as the soldiers answer. Scho is  _ so close. _ “Colonel Mackenzie. Find Colonel Mackenzie!”

“Mackenzie. Where’s Colonel Mackenzie?” Scho asks, hand going to his tin. He seems to bow under its weight a moment.

“He’s down at the line. We’re headed up there now,” the ginger tells him. 

Scho struggles to stand. The Privates haul him up. Once he’s on his feet, Scho starts to run, ignoring the shout that comes from the helpful Privates. Granted, it’s more of a stagger at this point, but Scho is faster than the long queue of soldiers leaving the woods and funneling into -- funneling into --

\-- Tom stops dead alongside Scho. The lines are  _ enormous. _ Smoke columns up neatly all along the horizon as far as the eye can see -- the German line.

“Jesus Christ,” Tom croaks out, stunned despite himself. He’s never seen anything so  _ big. _

Scho stands frozen for a moment, horror flickering over his face. Then, he starts up again.

The first Lance Corporal they find is handing out supplies to passing soldiers. “Where’s your commanding officer?” Scho asks him, urgently. “In the holding pen,” the Lance Corporal tells them, nodding further into the trenches, and Tom and Scho are off again, shoving through the queues. 

It’s a Lieutenant, barking orders to two platoons where the trenches open up to a staging area. Scho eels through the crowd with all the grace of a pair of pissed Privates just back from the front; Tom gives up finesse and starts walking straight through everyone in the way, which has the interesting effect of causing them to blanch, shake, or make the sign of the cross, depending. 

The Lieutenant does not react well to hearing that the attack has been called off, or to Scho pleading with him not to send the men over. But then -- “Scho, he can’t call it off,” Tom reminds him, frantic. “We’ve got to get to Colonel Mackenzie, he’s the ranking officer!” 

“Where is Colonel Mackenzie?” Scho screams right back at the Lieutenant, who grabs Scho’s lapels and shakes him. 

“Jesus Christ, man! Go and see the Captain!” The Lieutenant shoves him off and Scho bounces a little off one of the men.

“He must be at the front line,” Tom shouts. He hones on the direction of the front line. “Come on, follow me, Scho!” He ploughs through the crowd ahead of Scho. When Tom glances back, he sees the soldiers have parted nervously for a grim-looking Schofield, making his progress that much easier. Tom keeps it up, taking a rude sort of pleasure in clearing a path through the down trench. 

Then, they stumble out onto the front line. There is a moment of fearful quiet that seems to deaden everything -- nothing like the quiet of the line back where they went over, only yesterday. Tom looks at Scho in confusion and sees Scho flinch, full-body. Tom thinks he knows what it was like before the Somme, now.

The front line looks like little more than a ditch hastily scratched into the earth. Tom feels sick at the thought of it. There are no dugouts, no sandbags, no duckboards; the parapets are just gentle slopes onto the battlefield. Worse, this trench is just a smooth curve around. Tom can see the men crouching in a long line at the rear as officers stride between them and the soldiers who are lying ready to go over the top for at least a hundred yards -- no effort has been made to zig-zag at all. Anyone waiting here will die if a shell lands a direct hit. 

Scho finds a Sergeant, who points him to the Captain. The Captain is useless, flat-out unable to speak as he shakes and cries even as Scho begs him to stop the attack. Tom feels panic rising again, watching the Captain in the grips of utter terror -- when even your commanding officer can’t keep it together . . .

There is a tremendous  _ whump. _ The ground shakes. Tom’s mind goes blank for a long moment, lost in falling chalk dust and muffled screaming before Scho’s eyes find Tom’s and pin him back into reality. He stumbles behind as Scho picks his way through, pushing on. A second thunderous roar and Scho is thrown into the wall -- Tom falls, buried under tons of rock -- no that’s not how it happened --

“Keep going,” he gasps to Scho, kneeling in the trench. Tom can’t go any further with this keeping up. Already, the world around them is a screaming wall of noise. But Scho has to keep going -- Scho must reach Colonel Mackenzie. Tom can’t do it.

This time, Tom feels it as Scho reaches towards him and tugs, winding him up like a thread on a spool and rolling him into the comfort of the dark tin. But instead of falling into the darkness, Tom finds he is still aware of what is going on. Well, to an extent -- the tin vibrates with every shell that hits. He counts them -- five, nine, fifteen . . . 

Then, distinctly: “Sir! I have orders to stop the attack!” Scho’s voice resonates through the thin metal with greater force than any of the artillery blasts. Tom shivers, electricity coursing through him. “Where is Colonel Mackenzie?”

A response. “He’s further up the line.”

“How far?” Scho asks. 

“Three hundred yards. He’s in a cut and cover. You’ll have to wait until the first wave goes over.”

“No,” Tom hears Scho say. “No, I can’t.”

Another shell hits, and another. The Germans have zeroed in on the British lines now, and are doubling the attack. Then, Tom feels Scho’s heart stutter and start to pound. There is no more chatter he can overhear; Tom has no idea what is going on. Shells hit the ground, both nearer and farther. A tremendous shock goes through Scho and his tin twice, followed by a dizzying spin the second time. 

\-- and then, a tumbling roll. Tom feels the tin bang against something hard and thumps right back at it in surprise. And then the tin opens. 

Tom catches a glimpse of Scho’s face and feels Scho’s fingers pluck a thick folded-over envelope from his insides. It’s so disconcerting that Tom slithers out, into the trench.

There are ghosts here, sitting in shock. Tom would spend more time taking the sight in, but he sees that Scho is already several yards away, jogging for the opening of a dugout, and hurries to catch up. He gets there in time for the orderlies to get hold of Scho and drag him out of the opening. Scho hangs between them with hardly the strength to stand. 

“Listen to me, listen to me!” he pleads. “I have a letter! The attack must be stopped! I need to see Colonel Mackenzie!”

The orderlies are bewildered, but unmoved. “There’s no bloody way you’re getting in there, mate!” one yells back.

“Here, you!” Tom says, angry. He shoves at the both of them. “Let go of him!”

A Captain comes out. “Sergeant, send the next wave!” he shouts down the line.

“No!” Scho throws himself wildly just as the orderly closest the door shudders at Tom’s presence. Scho breaks free and stumbles into the dugout.

“Colonel Mackenzie!” Scho shouts, staggering to a stop in the gloom. He brandishes the letter with hands that should, by all rights, be shaking -- the group of officers turning to face him have expressions ranging from irritation to outright offense. Tom feels a cold sweat break out over his forehead and along his shoulders. “Sir, this attack is not to go ahead! You’ve been ordered to stop. You must stop.”

“Who the hell are you?” the Colonel demands. He is terrifyingly cool, absolutely imperious. His uniform is perfect. Tom is acutely aware that he has trench muck all over him -- not an impressive show on his part.

“Lance Corporal Blake, Sir,” Tom answers, saluting, and stops, hearing his response overlapping Schofield’s. Right; the Colonel’s not talking to the dead man in the room.

“8th,” he hears Schofield continue. “I have orders from General Erinmore to call off this attack.”

“You’re too late, Lance Corporal,” Colonel Mackenzie replies. He doesn’t even hesitate. Tom feels a sickening swoop as he realises the Colonel is  _ refusing to stop. _

Schofield’s voice shakes, even if his hand doesn’t. He holds out the envelope again. “Sir, these orders are from Army Command. You have to read them.” 

“Shall we hold back the second wave, Sir?” the Major next to the Colonel asks. 

“No, Major. Hesitate now and we lose our advantage,” Colonel Mackenzie says harshly. “Victory is five hundred yards away.”

“No,” Tom says, dismayed and despairing. “Please!”

“Sir -- Sir! Please read the letter,” Scho interjects. The officers are already turning back to the table they are gathered around.

Colonel Mackenzie rounds on Scho. “I have heard it all before,” the Colonel says, almost quietly, each word enunciated with vicious precision. Tom feels himself shrink back at the Colonel’s tone; every survival instinct he’s got is telling him to  _ shut the hell up right bloody now. _ “I’m not going to wait until dark, or for fog,” the Colonel continues. “I am  _ not _ calling back my men only to send them out there again tomorrow. Not when we’ve got the bastards on the run.  _ This is their last stand. _ You are dismissed.”

Whatever survival instincts Tom has, Scho clearly does not share. “They planned this,” he argues loudly, ignoring the dismissal outright. Tom sees the statement’s impact -- the Major swivels to stare in horror; the other officers freeze. Mackenzie goes still. “They’ve been planning it for months.  _ They want you to attack. _

“Please,” Scho repeats. Begs, his voice shaking with desperation. “Read the letter.”

Mackenzie nods to the Major, who takes the letter and hands it to Mackenzie. Mackenzie reads it. When he abruptly crumples it up after a long moment of silence, Tom can’t help but jump.

“Major,” Mackenzie says crisply.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Stand them down.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Thank God,” Tom whispers, sagging. “Thank God.” He can hardly believe it -- they’ve done it. They’ve gotten the attack called off.

Scho waits at attention, but closes his eyes with relief as Mackenzie gives orders to the other officers. They leave the dugout. 

“Heads up, Scho,” Tom tells him, seeing the Colonel walking towards them.

Scho’s eyes slide back open. He stiffens ever so slightly as the Colonel stops next to him, facing the entrance Scho came through. Mackenzie sighs and pulls off his helmet, wearily rubbing his scalp. 

“I hoped today would be a good day,” the man says quietly. “Hope is a dangerous thing.” 

He isn’t obviously addressing Schofield, but there is no one else in the cut and cover. Scho keeps his eyes on the ground, probably out of self-preservation. Tom is very confused. Why is the Colonel saying this? Is this some sort of apology? Tom thought officers this highly-ranked never bothered with anything but orders when it came to lowly NCOs like them.

“That’s it for now,” Mackenzie continues, a trace of bitterness flavoring his words. “Next week, Command will send a different message. ‘Attack at dawn.’”

Scho flicks a look at the Colonel, meeting the man eye to eye. Bloody hell, but Scho had balls.

“There is only one way this war ends: last man standing.” 

For a moment, Mackenzie is silent. He looks Scho up and down, taking in the lack of webbing, rifle, and helmet. The sodden clothes, still damp enough to make the chalk-dust stick to him like flour. The bandages around his left hand. The pallor.

“Have someone see to your wounds,” Mackenzie says to Scho directly. Scho stays standing there, uncomprehending. 

“Now fuck off,” the Colonel clarifies, rudely. Tom can’t hold in his nervous giggle.

Without a salute, Scho turns his back on the Colonel and starts moving again. It is clear he is nearly dead on his feet. “Come on, Scho,” Tom encourages him as they step out the entrance. “Just a little more. We’ve got to find Joe.”

The Major from before is outside. He spots Scho and catches his arm, stopping them by the door. 

“That was very well done,” the Major tells Scho quietly.

Scho looks at him a little blankly. Then -- “Thank you, Sir,” Scho rasps, nodding. 

“Joe,” Tom prompts him.

“Er -- Do you know where Lieutenant Blake is, Sir?” 

The Major blinks. “Blake?”

“There were two of us,” Scho says. “I was sent here with his brother.”

The Major looks at Scho. Then his gaze slides sideways and for a brief moment, Tom is certain that the Major looks at Tom, too.

“Ah,” the Major says. He clears his throat. “Well, knowing Lieutenant Blake, he would have gone over with his men. They were in the first wave.”

“No,” Tom says. It is punched out of him, along with all of the air in his lungs. Joe already went over.

Scho’s throat works as he swallows. “How could I find him, Sir?”

“You can try the casualty clearing station, behind the line. Otherwise . . .” The Major didn’t have to elaborate.

“Thank you, Sir.”

Tom is aware that he is panicking. He is breathing too fast for someone who doesn’t even need to breathe. His brother, already gone over. Perhaps stuck on the battlefield, dying, without a friend like Scho to hold him while he dies. Perhaps already dead, his body left sinking in a muddy crater somewhere. 

“Blake,” Scho says lowly, firmly. It pulls Tom back. “Stay with me. We will find him.”

Tom is in tears again. He can feel them rolling down his face and dripping off his chin, snot clogging his nose. He is shaking. “You can’t promise that,” Tom chokes out to him. 

Scho looks him dead in the eyes. “Yes,” he says. His tone gentles. “Yes, I can.”

Tom shivers at the reminder of what his friend can do. He rallies and swats at Scho’s shoulder to cover it. “Lead on, then,” he manages to say, struggling to get his emotions under control.

It is a grueling walk, going to the casualty clearing area behind the lines. Soldiers and stretcher-bearers and ghosts are all condensed into packed queues to fit into the narrow trenches. Tom wishes he could do more to help Scho get through, but he can’t even keep up a string of encouragement -- he’s too busy looking everywhere for his brother. Even just a glimpse of his face . . .

But he doesn’t see Joe, not once. They make it all the way to the casualty clearing station, where they are met by overworked and stressed medical officers who tell them to keep going if they are able to walk. Scho’s face, set as it is, wavers as they comb through row after row of soldiers with missing limbs and mangled flesh, blood staining everything. Not a single one of the soldiers there is Tom’s brother.

They are at the back of the last tent, now. Tom is numb, face feeling frozen. Scho looks back over the whole thing. He doesn’t seem to know what to do. Tom feels his hold over himself fraying.

“Now come on, boys,” Tom hears faintly on the wind. “He’s taken one in the leg. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Joe,” Tom whispers. That’s Joe’s voice. He whips around to see where it came from.

There’s an officer standing behind them, directing some stretchers from the opposite end of the lines than where they’d come from. Tom recognizes those shoulders, that posture.

“Scho, it’s Joe!” Tom shouts, and runs for his brother. “Joe, Joe!”

“Lieutenant Blake?” he hears Scho call after him.

Joe turns around. “Yes?” he says politely. 

Tom throws himself at him -- and goes right through him, of fucking course. “Fuck!” he shouts, and tries to touch his brother. To feel him, to know that Joe is real and here and that he isn’t dead like Tom.

Joe shivers briefly and frowns a little. “Do you need medical assistance?” Joe asks Scho.

“Yes,” Tom says immediately. 

“No, Sir. I’m from the 8th,” Scho responds. 

“Well then, what the hell are you doing here?” Joe asks, startled. Tom sees Joe make the connection while Scho answers. He walks beside his brother, keeping pace as Joe starts towards Scho. “The 8th? You must know my brother!”

Tom looks desperately at Schofield, then his brother, then back to Scho. He doesn’t know what to do -- beg for Scho to tell the truth? 

“I was sent here with him,” Scho says to Joe. 

Joe grins, overjoyed. “Tom’s here? Where is he?”

“Scho,” Tom pleads. He isn’t sure what for, but as he watches his brother’s face pass into uncertainty and fearfulness, he thinks he wishes Scho would tell the truth -- that Tom is still here, even dead. That Tom wishes Joe knew he were sorry that Tom couldn’t come home. Something like that.

“It was very quick,” Scho tells Joe, quietly. Unlike before, in the ditch, Scho doesn’t cry. He just looks tired. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Tom echoes softly. “Joe, I’m so sorry.” 

Joe nods. Scho digs out Tom’s rings and his tag, bloody and battered, and holds them out. After a moment, Joe takes them. His eyes are watering like mad, but he sucks in a sob and holds it back.

“What’s your name?” he gets out, looking at Tom’s things. His hands shake. He nods when Scho tells him, but doesn’t process Scho’s response. “I’m sorry, what?” Joe asks again.

“It’s Schofield, Sir. William Schofield.” Scho pauses. Tom looks at him, wordless; Scho meets his eyes steadily. “Will.”

Joe nods a third time, stronger, as though that will help him turn his mind back to the task at hand. “Well, you need some food. Get yourself to the mess tent.”

Scho nods and starts to turn around. 

“Wait!” Tom begs. Scho can’t leave Joe alone like this. Joe is a Lieutenant; he’s got no one to turn to besides other Lieutenants, and Scho is good at this, explaining things. Scho can help. “Wait, Scho, please. Give him something. Help him -- please! He’s my brother. Please!”

Scho stops. “If I may, I’d like to write to your mother,” he says abruptly, turning back. “To tell her that Tom wasn’t alone.”

Joe chokes up. “Of course,” he replies as politely as he can manage. It hurts. Joe is supposed to be strong and smart and annoyingly good at everything; he should be good at taking the news of Tom’s death, but he’s not, and it  _ hurts. _

“He was . . . a good man. Always telling funny stories.” A shadow passes over Scho’s face. Joe isn’t looking; tears streak from his eyes and he nods convulsively. 

“He saved my life,” Scho adds, voice stronger. Rougher. 

Joe sucks in a horrible breath. It seems to settle him. “Then I am glad you were with him,” he answers, firm at last. He holds out his hand. “Thank you, Will,” Joe adds as Scho reaches out and shakes it.

Scho nods and turns away. He sways as he walks. 

Tom feels the need to follow him. But -- first he reaches out to Joe, who is looking now at the hand he closed around Tom’s things. “I’ll come back,” Tom promises. “I’ll check in on you. I promise.” And then he leaves his brother behind and follows as Scho staggers to a lone tree, standing tall and graceful not thirty yards away.

He gets there as Scho stops and sits heavily, facing away from the lines and the Aid Post and the battlefield. 

“You should really get something to eat,” Tom tells his friend. Tom might be a ghost now, but by god, the exhaustion is contagious. He feels all wrung out; he wants to curl up in the grass as the sun rises and sleep. “And help, for your hand. And your head.”

“Just a moment,” Scho answers, faintly, fumbling out his tin. Tom can see his eyes fluttering as he struggles to stay awake. “Let me have a minute.”

Scho opens the tin and pulls out the two photographs Tom saw in the darkness. The two things Scho holds closest to himself: his daughters and his wife. 

For a moment, Tom imagines being in Scho’s place. Writing to Scho’s wife to tell her about being there as Scho died, scared and crying on foreign soil. About how Scho had, at least, not been alone. He thinks of Joe, struggling to be polite and courteous even in the face of Tom’s death.

“They’re lovely,” Tom says to Scho. 

Scho turns over the second photograph, the one of his wife.  _ Come back to us. _

Scho takes a shuddering breath. “I know,” he says, longing, and closes his eyes. 

Tom listens to him breathe and settles down in the grass. Scho might as well get some rest; everything else can come later.

The sun rises, and warms; and even though he’s dead, Tom breathes with Will. In -- out. 

In --

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Pavuvu for being amazing and supportive and banding with me on this crazy ride. Without your comments I wouldn't be nearly as good at this! (I may or may not have described our new irl friend status as "the highlight of my weekend" to my colleagues and students, just btw. #friendmonster)
> 
> If you need something to tide yourselves over while waiting for the last chapter, LadyCharity posted a sequel to their amazingly lovely post-war Schofield-centric 15k fic! (And if you haven't read the first one, either, you should!)


	5. Schofield

“Lance Corporal Schofield?”

Will stirs. He doesn’t quite wake up, but he becomes vaguely more aware of the world around him. 

Footsteps, through the grass. “Lance Corporal Schofield,” the voice says, louder. Closer. 

Now that he is in its grip, the actual sleep that Will has so long been denied resists the attempts to pull him from it. He inhales and opens his eyes, but he doesn’t process what he sees at first.

The sun is high in the sky. It is at least noon, though probably just past. Will must have fallen asleep under the tree, then. He looks down -- he is still holding his photographs, though the tin has slipped off his lap and tipped to one side. 

A little ways past, Blake is stretched out on his back in the grass, helmet shading his face. His chest rises and falls. Will never heard of any ghosts who took naps, but, he supposed, there wasn’t any reason they couldn’t.

“Will?”

Will looks up sharply, wincing as the action sends little shocks of pain through his skull. Right; he supposes he was technically shot . . . he should get it looked at.

The speaker is Lieutenant Blake. He has stopped on the other side of the tree, where Will is, and is studying Will’s appearance. 

“Yes, Sir?” Will ventures. Maybe he should get up. He collects his tin and gently places the photographs back inside. Then, he tries getting to his feet. Even leaning heavily on the tree trunk and moving very slowly, the whole world spins disturbingly and he almost falls flat on his face. Lieutenant Blake catches him by the shoulder and elbow of his left arm and helps hoist him upright.

“I thought so,” Tom’s older brother says, resigned, and doesn’t let go of Will. Will feels like he can manage to stand holding onto just the tree, but what an officer wants is what a soldier makes happen, so. “Let’s get you to the medical tent; they’ve got things almost under control there and can take a look at you. I’m glad I remembered seeing you come this way.”

“Sir?” However much sleep Will had managed, it wasn’t enough to puzzle out why the Lieutenant was out here chivvying Will along to get looked at. Maybe Joseph was exactly as pushy as Tom? Will hopes he isn’t getting adopted by another Blake; Tom is more than enough at the moment. (He carefully doesn’t think about how Tom will be leaving, as soon as Will locates a churchyard.)

Will puts his tin in his pocket and glances briefly at Tom, who is still fast asleep in the grass. Will doesn’t have to feign being in pain to hide the way he wraps Tom’s ghost around his collar; his grimace is real enough as he reaches up to check that he does in fact still have a bullet wound on the back of his head. Tom’s (still slumbering) presence offers some slight comfort as the Lieutenant insists on having Will drape an arm over his shoulders as he helps Will wobble back down to the Aid Post tents. 

“Was it hard going, getting out here?” Lieutenant Blake asks after a moment of silence. 

Will thinks about how to answer that. “Yeah, a bit,” he says at last. “Dogfight got in the way.” 

“You were flying?”

“No, Sir. The loser landed on top of us.” 

“Ah.”

When they reach the Aid Post, Will wishes he were back under the tree. It was a hell of a lot quieter in the middle of nowhere. The immediacy of battle has ended, as has most of the post-battle surgery, but the ghosts trapped in the agony of dying from horrible wounds haven’t noticed, yet. 

Lieutenant Blake helps him sit on a cot as a medical officer wearily begins the process of examining Lance Corporal Schofield. “Injuries?” the man asks curtly.

“Head and hand,” Will answers. He can feel his tiredness in his bones as he ignores the spirit occupying the cot. “Head was a gunshot. Got stuck on barbed wire for the hand.”

The medic sighs and motions for Will to show the man his head. Will tilts forward obligingly and watches the world spin. He shivers as the ghost on the cot tries to push him out of it.

The medic prods at the wound on his head roughly enough that Will loses track of things for a moment, waves of painful light ripping through him. He reemerges to find himself panting harshly, held upright only by Lieutenant Blake’s alarmed hold on his shoulders. Will is clutching at Tom’s brother’s sleeve, white-knuckled with effort. 

The medic tsks. “Definite concussion,” he says. “And you were very lucky. Looks like a ricochet. How’d you get one of those in the battle?”

“Sniper in Écoust,” Will says, shivering. He’s never been good at telling ghosts to fuck off, and he’s not doing well at telling this one to leave him alone now. “I wasn’t in the battle.”

“No? Why’d you come here, then?”

“I had a message to deliver.”

“How long ago were you shot?” the medic wanted to know.

Will closes his eyes and tries to think. “Midafternoon, yesterday,” he says. Try though he might, he can’t recall any specifics of the time. “We . . . we left just after noon. Made it through No-Man’s-Land and the German bunkers in about an hour . . . there was the farm . . . got picked up by a convoy who dropped me off maybe two and a half hours after we left.”

“Unconsciousness? Anything else?”

“Yeah. The first one,” he hurried to clarify. “When I woke up it was dark.”

“We’ll come back to your head, then.” The medic motions for him to hold out his hand. Will gives it to him. The man exclaims at the filthy bandage and unwraps it hurriedly.

“A sniper?” Lieutenant Blake asks quietly.

“Saw me coming over the bridge,” Will elaborates, also quietly. He winces as the medic starts to wash off his hand with some sort of alcohol. “Cornered him in his nest. He managed one off on me before I got him.”

Lieutenant Blake is quiet as the medic rewraps Will’s hand with a fresh (clean) bandage. “Is that when . . .” he starts, but can’t go on. 

“No,” Will says. Dimly he is aware he is shaking; it probably has to do with the numbing horror he’s been pushing down and pushing down since he made his biggest mistake to date. “That was the dogfight.”

“He’s going into shock,” the medic says. 

“What’s all this?” For fuck’s sake -- of all the times for Tom to wake up. “Scho, what’s going on?” 

Will is holding onto Lieutenant Blake again. He’s not sure when that happened.

“Get him to lie down,” the medic snaps.

“Sod off!” Private Whitely, the ghost on the cot, is getting even more hysterical. He hasn’t realised he’s already bled out all over the ground and it doesn’t matter anymore. 

“Oi,” Tom barks at Private Whitely. “None of that. You’re already dead. Scho’s still alive -- he’s got precedence.  _ You _ sod off!” 

Ignoring the unfolding drama, Will holds on to Joseph Blake despite the Lieutenant’s efforts to push him flat. The words are pushing up out of him without control. Will doesn’t fight it: this is important to say. “I should’ve saved him,” Will says, and the Lieutenant stops struggling with him and stills. “It was my fault. Tom wanted to help the pilot we pulled out of the cockpit. I said we should -- if I’d just shot the Bosche, if I’d put him out of his misery -- Tom wouldn’t’ve died.” His breathing is painful, scratching down his throat in great gasps and hollowing out his lungs. 

“You need to lie down,” the medic says firmly, grasping Will’s shoulder. “Get him on his stomach -- we still need to clean out his head.” His words break the spell over the Lieutenant; the two coordinate to wrestle Will flat on the cot. 

“I suppose Tom said no to that,” the Lieutenant says quietly as Will gives up and lies down. Tom has started a heated argument between Private Whitely and another dead soldier, who has been sitting on the floor, which means that Private Whitely has vacated the cot and lying on it is not nearly as disconcerting. 

Will sighs, face half-mashed into the pillow. He feels somehow lighter now. Lying down has never felt so wonderful as it has now, after a hellish journey and only four hours’ of sleep. “Wouldn’t even consider it. Told me to get the man some water and sent me off to the pump.” 

Lieutenant Blake covers his eyes with one hand and shakes his head. The medic reappears and briskly shakes out a blanket over Will. “If you’re staying Sir, make yourself useful,” he says, and hands the Lieutenant something Will can’t quite see with his reduced field of vision.

He is, however, able to see Private Whitely take a swing at Tom, who ducks with alacrity and scrambles back through some poor postoperative soldier who twitches even harder through his nightmares. The ghost who had been sitting on the floor grabs the Private in a headlock. He and Tom haul the Private outside.

Not that it makes the tent quieter, anyway. There’s still a fair bit of activity going on. But Will is slipping back into sleep already.

“Can’t risk morphine,” the medic is telling the Lieutenant. Or maybe to Will. “So this’ll hurt. Hold him steady.”

Will has a bad moment when --

\--  _ his arms tangle in his gear as he fights to get the webbing’s buckles and straps undone before it pulls him under _ \--

\-- two hands push his shoulders down against the cot. Lieutenant Blake keeps him pinned when Will starts to thrash against the blanket, though, long enough to call Will back to his senses with some sort of soothing chatter. Will recalls that he is not, actually, in a river, but rather about to get a nasty head wound treated. He sets his jaw, works his good hand free of the blanket to get a tight hold on one edge of the cot, and holds that, his tongue, and his temper as the medic dabs away with disinfectant and cotton and then stitches the wound shut. 

Limned as it is with the shivery feel of the burst of adrenaline, the whole affair is painful and exhausting. Will finds himself trembling again at the end of it. He’ll wind up with a tremor if he’s not careful. 

“If that’s all, clear him out when he stops shaking,” the medic tells Lieutenant Blake as Will tries to gasp quietly into the pillow. “He can be elsewhere so long as it’s somewhere he can rest.”

“He can’t rest here?” the Lieutenant asks.

The medic shrugs. “Sure he can. Until the Hun starts shelling us again.”

“Have you eaten, Lance Corporal?” the Lieutenant asks Will, next, as the medic moves on to another task.

“No Sir,” Will says, focusing on deliberately walling off the lingering ache in his head. He can’t recall eating anything since the tough bread and ham he’d shared with Blake on their way to General Erinmore. “Not since lunch, yesterday.”

“Right,” says Lieutenant Blake. “Then we’re getting you some food. After, you’ll bunk with my men until we sort out how to get you back to the 8th in one piece.”

Will catches sight of Tom standing nearby, listening in with obvious interest. Well -- Will supposed it couldn’t do any harm. 

“Thank you, Sir,” he says, instead of something ridiculous like asking why the Lieutenant feels the need to take an interest in Will’s welfare. Because he’s a Blake, undoubtedly. Generosity of spirit probably runs in the family. Will pushes himself upright and ignores the last few tremors that’ll work themselves out as soon as his body gets moving again. (The Lieutenant looks like he wants to protest, but he just presses his mouth shut and arranges to be standing close enough for Will to grab if he feels the sudden urge to topple over.)

“I know I’m dead, but I’m happy to see him,” Tom murmurs to Will as they head back out to the open air. “I always thought you two would get on if you met.”

“What, like us?” Will mutters back, and could kick himself -- not supposed to talk to ghosts. 

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Lieutenant Blake says.

“Nothing,” Will says, thinking quickly. “Just thinking about how much walking I’ve been doing.” It isn’t even a lie, either; his feet ache with each step and his legs are leaden to lift. 

After that, he shuts his mouth and keeps it like that until he’s managed to make it to the mess, where he’s handed a bowl of unidentifiable stew and some biscuits that -- after nearly a full day without food -- is as welcome as any home-made chicken dinner. Thankfully, the Lieutenant also gets a helping; Will feels more at ease and less as though he’s being attended to when Tom’s brother proves to be just as adept at inhaling his meals as Tom was, odd though it is to be eating with an officer. 

The food settles heavily in Will’s stomach, but not unpleasantly so. It is the thought of what must be done that makes it sit heavily in his gut. Tonight . . . tonight, Will will find a graveyard.

But that is for tonight. For now they still have time. Will pushes the thought of how to say goodbye to the back of his head. 

By the time they get to where Lieutenant Blake’s section is stationed, Will is ready to sleep for a century. He nods to the men who are chatting lice when he’s introduced and agrees to muck in with them later. When he is pointed to an emptied bunk, he doesn’t think twice before teasing the ghost of its former occupant into one of his buttons and stretching out and closing his eyes at last . . .

“Scho?” he hears. “Scho?”

“Nnn,” Will manages. 

“Scho, wake up.”

“What?” Will grates out. He rubs at his eyes; his left hand twinges unpleasantly. It’s probably infected. He opens his eyes.

It’s night. Not terribly late -- some men are sitting up and chatting quietly in a corner -- but it is true dark outside, not twilight. Past nine, then, at the very least; probably closer to ten. Tom’s older brother is nowhere in sight, but that’s not surprising -- he doubtless has other duties.

Blake stands next to the bunk, looking at him with the exact same expression shared by long-suffering puppies cooped overly-long inside the house, everywhere. 

“Scho,” he says. “It’s been hours. Can we go somewhere to talk?”

Will rubs at his eyes again and yawns. His head still aches, but that is to be expected. It is significantly less painful than it was earlier, at least. His hand is a different matter: the sharp pain of torn flesh is now a slow throb.

He sits up slowly. The men in the corner look over at him briefly; Will makes an obvious show of yawning and stretching to give himself a moment of respite, if they want to talk to him.

They don’t, not really -- but one gets up and goes over to him. “You missed supper,” he says to Will. “Lieutenant Blake told us you’d need to eat when you woke up -- we’ve some bread and biscuit left over.” 

Will could use the food. His stomach is growling, as it tends to. “Biscuit’s good,” he says. He knows they only offered the bread because Lieutenant Blake is the one who told them. They contrive to give him some bread, anyway. He listens to their chatter as he eats.

As it turns out, Croisilles is not just a wood, but a small town. The remains of one, at least. Down the line, the opposite end of where he and Blake fetched up on the dam, the ruins are still standing. The Aid Station was relocated there a few hours ago.

Will excuses himself when he finishes the meal. They will likely infer that he needs to use the latrine, which is well enough by him. No one will miss him for a few hours once this lot have gone to bed.

Once he and Blake are beyond the hearing of the other soldiers, Will relents. “Alright, Tom,” he says to the ghost who is attempting to kick at rocks on the path they follow. The camp around them is largely silent; most men have long since gone to sleep. Will revises his earlier assessment of the time as being closer to eleven, a feeling that is born out by the tide of his blood and the ticking in his bones.

Blake raises an eyebrow. “Tom?”

Will rolls his eyes, already feeling his mood lift. “Blake, then.”

“No, no -- you can call me Tom.”

“How do you do,  _ Thomas Robert Blake.” _

“Oi! That’s  _ Lance Corporal _ Thomas Robert Blake, I’ll have you know.”

Will laughs despite himself. He will miss this. The thought sobers him. 

“I know you, you wanker -- you’ll apologize for being asleep the whole day,” Blake says. “So, before you start -- it’s all right.”

“Not the whole day,” Will says.

“Enough to need forgiveness for,” Blake answers archly. 

“From who? The King?”

Blake thumps him. Will laughs again. They walk in companionable silence through the camp.

“You’re feeling better, though?”

Will catches a flash of the anxious look Blake shoots him. He must’ve looked awful, then; Blake rarely notes anything other than the worst of calamities in his personal record. “Hand isn’t happy. Don’t think I’ll be wanking any time soon,” he says, trying for a joke.

“I thought you said it was the wrong hand.”

“You’re not wrong.” Will is reluctant to say it. He wishes he were as good at Blake with his words; Will hasn’t had the same skill with them since September. He reaches for the first thing that comes to mind. “How’s your brother?”

“Better than you!” This cheers Blake up immediately. “He’s written about it in letters, but it’s wonderful seeing him in action. I swear, Scho, when I first joined the 8th, I had second thoughts about officers, but watching him? He’s one of the good ones. I mean, I grew up with him, but . . . “ and Tom is off, rattling through everything Will missed while he was sleeping off the mission. 

Will listens to the chatter as they get closer to their destination. He lets it run through him, memorizing the flow and cadence of the words as best he can. He wants to remember this.

Up ahead is the Aid Post. This far back from the front line, it is relatively well-lit by the dim glow of a few lamps and candles. Will briefly ducks inside to check his watch. Although the glass has been smashed, the watch is still ticking; with the light, he is able to just see through the spiderwebbing of cracks. It is half-past eleven.

Around the Aid Post, other army establishments have been relocated -- some additional billets for those not immediately needing the Aid Post’s services, what is maybe a storage depot. Something that is probably an officers’ club and something that looks like a more permanent headquarters are also here; fortunately, both appear to be fairly empty. But no matter how much the ruins have been appropriated by the army, the graveyard remains untouched. The low brick walls are some of the tallest remaining structures in the town, Will sees; what is left of the neighboring church, for instance, is no more than a foot high in comparison. The gates are still standing. All of this reassures Will that he is in the right place.

The gates are also unlocked. Will and Tom slip inside with ease.

“What’re we doing here, Scho?” Tom asks. He frowns at the weathered gravestones and weeds. 

Will smooths his hands over his jacket, checks the lining and buttons and stitches and pockets. Most of the ghosts he remembers picking up are still here; only the ones he stored in his kit are gone. (For a moment he mourns their loss, left trapped in a river’s tumbling waters.) “Waiting,” he replies, and finds a spot to sit where he has a good view of the centre and can lean against the wall. “But go on -- keep telling me about D Company. They made it out all right, yeah?”

“One of them actually did make it onto the casualty lists,” Tom says, rolling his eyes. “Fumbled his bayonet and sliced up his own hand by accident.”

“Scared to go over?”

“No -- by all accounts he was trying to flip it all fancy-like, first. His chums thought it’d be a laugh to lay him out on a stretcher and carry him to the Aid Post, though, just to rag him for it.”

Will laughs. “I’ll bet that went over well.”

“The medics tossed the lot right back out! Dunno what else they expected. But they’re all new, or most of them are. They were looking forward to seeing some action.” Tom pauses a moment, looking a bit rueful. “Just like me, I suppose.”

“We all do, at first.” Here, Will can acknowledge it: that not too long ago, he’d been the one who had hoped for a good fight. Back when boredom and homesickness had been his biggest problems. “It’s when you finally see some you rather wish you hadn’t.”

“I suppose.” Tom thinks it over. Watching him, Will has a feeling that Tom’s death isn’t something that has sunk in for his friend, yet. But Tom lets it go for now -- he has something else he wants to know. “Right, so what are we waiting for?”

Will can sense it already; it is midnight. He stands up as the flattened church’s bell begins to toll.

“What the -- Scho, how’s the bell ringing --”

The world flips over. Inexplicably, Will recovers his memory of going over the waterfall; it crashes through him as the bell strikes twelve and leaves him insensate for a long moment.

When he has regained the use of his eyes, the churchyard’s Grim woofs in greeting. This one reminds Will of the French sheepdogs, a stocky fellow with a short coat. It is friendlier by far than the rail-thin wolfhound Grims at home. 

“Good evening,” Will says politely, and approaches it carefully.

Tom makes the most peculiar noise. He has pressed himself against the wall of the churchyard. 

Will stretches out his hand in greeting. The Grim cocks its head and ignores it; it comes forward to sniff at his other hand, his bad hand. It sticks its whole snout under until it nudges Will’s palm up, hard enough to make the wound twinge.

“Barbed wire,” Will explains. “Then Albert Kropp.” He stops, and the Grim looks at him. “Well, what was left of him.”

The Grim growls, disconcertingly. Will has a moment to feel that something is wrong before the Grim opens its mouth and  _ bites. _

“Fuck!” Will swears, and yanks his hand free. He cradles it against his chest for a moment, eying the spectral dog; Will’s never received this sort of welcome before. “What was that for?”

The Grim woofs and wags its tail. 

Will sighs. He’s not sure what he expected, really. “Well, I’ve brought some for you,” he says. “Do you want them?”

The Grim leans forward expectantly. Will offers his hand a second time. This time, the dog’s tongue rasps up his palm. All the hairs on Will’s arms stand straight up at the shockingly electric tingle that bolts through him. 

The ghosts come on out, one by one. Major Stevenson and Privates Beaufort and Hill from the part of the line held by the Yorks. Albert Kropp, who had been vengefully haunting rats when Will put his hand through his chest. Monsieur Brodeur, his wife Helena, their two children Ulysse and Hippolyta. Afrodille and Guillaume and the five-years-old Esmerence. Three more Bosche -- Krause, Bergmann, Keller. Private Jones, left in Écoust by his classmates. Private Whitely, still confused but markedly less hysterical after spending most of the day in Will’s jacket trim. Sergeant Everard, from Lieutenant Blake’s section. 

And it is here that Will closes his eyes; he finds he can’t bear to watch Tom step forward and go. Will hears the Grim trot out the graveyard, the dead following. Their presence disappears, and the world flips the right-side up again. 

Will breathes. It is all he can think to do. He opens his eyes: the churchyard is empty once more but for weeds and weathered gravestones.

“What on  _ earth _ was that?” 

For a moment, Will thinks that he must be imagining things. He pivots, fully expecting to discover that this is it -- he’s finally cracked and gone mad. Surely . . .

Tom smacks him. His arm goes right through Will’s chest; Will can see Tom’s arm ending abruptly right through Will’s heart. “You are a total wanker, you know,” Tom snaps at him. “You didn’t even introduce me to it. Just threw me in there with no warning, either.” 

“What’re you still doing here?” Will blurts.

“What do you think I’m still doing here?” Tom sounds genuinely confused.  _ “You’re _ here, where else would I be?”

“But --” This isn’t how it usually works. Will looks at the gate: no Grim. He looks at Tom: still there. “You’re dead. You’ve got to move on.”

Tom looks annoyed, now. “No, I haven’t,” he says, frowning. He looks more closely at Will. “Wait a mo’ -- were you bringing me here so that I could ‘move on’? Is that what this trip was about?”

Will opens and closes his mouth a few times before finding the words. “That . . . is usually what happens when I bring ghosts to the Grim,” he says slowly. Seeing Tom’s annoyance shift to anger, Will hurriedly adds, “Not just you, though, I picked up a lot of them on the way here --”

“Lance Corporal Schofield?” 

Will and Tom both jump. It’s -- bloody hell, it’s both Lieutenant Blake and the Major from the dugout. The Lieutenant is peering over the wall; the Major is clearly waiting for him.

“It  _ is _ you!” says the Lieutenant and comes around to the gate. Will can see the odd look the man gives him even in the dark -- right; Will, alone in a graveyard at midnight. “I’m glad to see you’re up. How’s your head?” 

“Feeling much better, Sir. Felt the need for a bit of a . . . walk,” Will answers obliquely, trusting the implication will answer the unasked question. He goes to meet the Lieutenant. The Grim has come and gone; there’s no use standing around the graveyard save privacy, and clearly that’s gone out the window. Tom follows, with a look that promises bloody retribution in the near future. “Thank you for letting me bunk with your men.”

Lieutenant Blake waves off Will’s salute and claps him on the shoulder. Up this close, Will can smell alcohol; Tom’s brother was probably coming from the officers’ club. “They made sure you got something to eat, right?” he asks.

“Yes, Sir. I missed supper, but there was biscuit left over.” Remembering the kindness of Blake’s men, Will adds, “Some of the men had bread, too.” 

“Good,” says the Lieutenant. Will’s not quite sure how it happens, but he finds himself being steered out into the roadway where the Major is. He salutes the other officer.

The Major returns it politely. “Lance Corporal,” he says in greeting, and then, recognising him -- “Ah, you. I see you were able to find the Lieutenant.” 

“Yes, Sir.” 

The Major turns to Lieutenant Blake. “I’ll walk with you,” he says to the Lieutenant, “I’m headed down there anyway.”

“Come on,” Tom’s brother tells Will. “I’m heading back to my section.” So Will falls in behind them. It is undoubtedly an order, and he hasn’t anywhere better to be, anyway. The two officers largely ignore him; they continue the conversation Will presumably interrupted when the Lieutenant noticed him in the graveyard. 

“I know this might come as a surprise to you,  _ you absolute arse,” _ Tom says conversationally next to him a moment later. The ghost keeps pace with Will as they troop back through the camp. “But you are, believe it or not, my best mate. So I’ll be damned if being dead means ‘moving on’ while you’re still around getting shot at.”

Will flicks a look at the pair of officers a few strides ahead of him and risks it. “That’s not how it works,” he murmurs back in a low undertone. The conversation ahead of him doesn’t falter. “You don’t owe me or anyone else anything, anymore. You can get out of all this --”

_ “You _ can’t,” Tom points out sharply. Will tightens his mouth around the response he’d like to give to that. Tom’s tone softens as he says “And Will, I can help you. I can do things like scout ahead -- who’ll see me coming? You wouldn’t have to risk so much.”

Will says nothing. He couldn’t even if he could find the words. Keeping Tom around -- it’s selfish, and Will shouldn’t want to. That he does makes him -- well. Not as good a person as he’d like to believe he -- wait, as good a person could be when killing so many others -- no, he -- he --

“If it were you,” Tom asks seriously. “Would you choose to leave?”

Will sucks in his breath before he can stop. Swallows, hard. He doesn’t know. But he does notice that Lieutenant Blake shoots him a quick look, checking him over. Will scrubs at his eyes and works to hide his expression.

Tom gives Will a look that speaks volumes when Will looks to the side.

They’ve reached the Lieutenant’s section. He and the Major bid each other goodnight. Will salutes both and ducks around a corner when they aren’t looking. He leans on the wall and tries to breathe deeply.

Will feels like he has become the glass face of his smashed watch, fractured and fragmented. -- and sharp. But as he has learned all too well in the last few months -- in the face of Tom Blake, there is no way around but through. And since Tom has somehow -- incredible and impossible though it seems --  _ refused _ the Grim’s call . . . well.

Will rubs at his eyes, defeated, and sighs. His shoulders slump even as his heart lifts. “Alright then,” he says quietly to Tom, resigned. “We’d best get on with it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap on this one! I hope this fic has delighted and entertained. I also hope people weren't freaking out and not commenting because they thought Blake would wind up dead -- I tagged Major Character Death because, well, the character is unquestionably dead. (Um. Should I remove that?)
> 
> Also, there will be a sequel! OBVIOUSLY The Continuing Adventures of Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield must happen. What sorts of things would you guys like to see?
> 
> If you have the time and spirit, [give this a listen](https://youtu.be/X8N-wRZUgqQ) \-- it's Paul Aitkins's choral arrangement of John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields," from which this work's (and series's) title is taken. The title lyrics are sung just after 3:06 in the video if you want the full musical effect.
> 
> Lastly: Pavuvu, as always, you are the epitome of magnificence. I can only aspire to be as incredibly amazing as you! #friendmonsterinahousefire

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [words over all](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339385) by [LadyCharity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity)




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